[Sw-l] Announcing the Sutton SignWriting Platform: Complete Eight-Series Release

[Kimberley Shaw]

Awesomely well-written manifesto, Steve.
Bravo! This is the kind of explanation the world needs. Thank you!
Ki. From Boston

On Sun, May 24, 2026, 12:56 PM Steve Slevinski <slevin at signpuddle.net>
wrote:

> Hi SignWriting List,
>
> I've noticed that Sutton SignWriting is not always described accurately in
> scholarly literature, standards discussions, and related technical work. To
> help address this, I have released the Sutton SignWriting Platform:
> Complete Eight-Series Release on Zenodo, GitHub, and my personal website.
>
> This is a comprehensive reference record written from my perspective as
> the technical author and long-term steward of the Formal SignWriting
> encoding and software infrastructure. It builds on Valerie Sutton's
> invention of SignWriting, decades of SignWriting practice, and the work of
> many writers, teachers, researchers, and communities.
>
> Platform release:
> https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20041043
> https://github.com/sutton-signwriting/platform-record
> https://steveslevinski.me/#section/publications
>
> The release includes eight connected series:
>
> Sutton SignWriting Foundations - Public entry point and conceptual
> foundation.
> Sutton SignWriting Evidence and Adoption - Evidence base, adoption
> boundaries, and country anchors.
> Signed Language Writing Critical Review Series - Literature and standards
> review through the layer-based framework.
> Writing and Representation in Sutton SignWriting - Writing-systems theory,
> authored space, and typological framing.
> Formal SignWriting - Technical text model, encoding, search, rendering,
> styling, and practice.
> Sutton SignWriting Language and Literacy Research - Research agenda for
> signed-language literacy, reading, and pathway questions.
> Sutton SignWriting Infrastructure and Program - Stewardship, host
> structure, shared infrastructure, and program design.
> Unicode and SignWriting - Unicode-facing technical notes, compatibility
> issues, and standards record.
>
> I have tried to be careful, fair, and precise throughout these materials.
> This is not a claim that every sentence is perfect or that these documents
> are the last word on SignWriting. They are meant to be read, cited,
> questioned, corrected where needed, and built from.
>
> At the same time, the release plants a clear flag: Sutton SignWriting
> should be engaged as it actually exists, with its history, practice,
> dictionaries, software, users, writing-system structure, and technical
> infrastructure taken seriously. I hope this platform makes it harder for
> future work to mischaracterize SignWriting or treat it as less developed
> than it is.
>
> I have also included a short human-facing companion text that says the
> heart of the project more directly:
>
> The Inevitable Text
> https://steveslevinski.me/#page/the-inevitable-text
>
> I hope these materials are helpful and useful.
>
> Regards,
> -Steve
>
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