Re: SLIPA vs Gesture spelling

Gary wrote in response to Steg:

<<
Thanks.  I'd forgotten about Rikchik. I recall seeing
it a long time ago.  I'll definitely have to make
mention of it in my web page.
 >>

Incidentally, comparing Rikchik to other signed
transcription systems, it really is more like SignWriting.
(Which is neat, by the way, though impractical.)

Gary also wrote:

<<
I agree wholeheartedly with all of that.  This is not
meant to be a counterargument, and I certainly didn't
mean "vs" in a confrontational way, but in a
comparative way. :-)
 >>

Ah, okay.  Sorry if I was a bit touchy.  It's just that
lately (and this isn't on CONLANG, but elsewhere)
people have been mischaracterizing my ideas, and
it's been bugging me.  Thus, I was looking for
criticism where I shouldn't have been.  I'm sorry.

Gary:

<<
SLIPA would be very userful as the IPA for my signed
conlang, and I would like to link to your page and use
your notation to spell out the possible ways in which
a particular consign gesture might be realized.
 >>

By all means, go ahead.  I haven't "released" the page
yet, so to speak, because I want to have the pages for
my CSL ready (in fact, if you go to that page, you'll
see a link to KNSL--that's it).  Additionally, I'm also
developing another unrelated page that I'd like to be
complete, so that I can go through and just do one
site-wide update, and not three.

Gary:

<<
I don't doubt that an IPA is useful, in fact I'm sure
it's vital, but I'm just abysmally ignorant in that
branch of linguistics.
 >>

Ah, okay.  The basic point, though, that an individual
speaker says the same thing differently from other
speakers is valid, and it applies to sign, too.
For that reason, a phonetic alphabet is an abstraction,
and in abstraction, something is always lost.  So
your "ignorance" really simply brought to light an
issue that all linguists take for granted.  (Plus, if
you're on this list, you're not as ignorant as you
might think.  Your opinion is *always* valuable.)

Gary:

<<
What I did was to write the alphabet in Word at a very
large font size and then take a screen shot of that
and cut and paste bits and pieces of the Times New
Roman letters and stuck them together like Tinkertoys
to build new characters.  The next step, after the
whole collection of symbols is designed, is to turn
them into a font and map them to the standard
keyboard.
 >>

Oh, of course!  An unfortunate problem with the
way I create fonts, though (and I don't know if you
have the same issue with whatever program you
use), is that I can't just copy something from a
*different* program and paste it into my fonting
program, even if it is a letter.  Once you get to
fonting, I'd be eager to know how you do it, and
to see the font.

-David