Re: How to spell a gesture
From: | Muke Tever <hotblack@...> |
Date: | Saturday, February 19, 2005, 4:36 |
Gary Shannon <fiziwig@...> wrote:
> --- Muke Tever <hotblack@...> wrote:
>
>> Gary Shannon <fiziwig@...> wrote:
>> Probably like this:
http://signwriting.org/
>>
>
> Interesting, but not at all what I had in mind since
> this system uses gobs of hard-to-draw two-dimensional
> pictures and symbols.
According to "Writing by Hand in Signwriting":
http://www.signwriting.org/archive/docs1/sw0005-Write-By-Hand.pdf
(which contains several images of handwritten signwriting)
there seems to be a shorthand system as well.
> What I have in mind is a linear alphabetic script that
> can, with the appropriate font, be typed into a computer,word by word, line by line.
They seem to have enlisted Michael Everson to look into getting it
implemented into Unicode. I don't know the details, tho.
But there are a couple of programs that allow direct input of
Signwriting text.
> Go to that website and look at the symbol for "forum"
> and compare that to something like
>
> ['(-C&C
>
> which might be interpreted as "Tap chest with palm,
> change to two claw hands face to face shoulder length
> apart." Much easier to type than the complex
> two-dimensional diagram of signwriting.
Maybe, but fiddling with the Signwriting IME it seems to be something that
wouldnt be too hard to figure out--it can be entered entirely by keyboard,
though "claw hands face to face" itself takes about seven keystrokes.
> They try to draw a picture of the object or concept.
> I'm trying to give instructions for duplicating
> (possibly mentally) a manual gesture.
Actually they do try to duplicate the gesture. The problem is that the gestures
in sign language are a lot more complicated than "palm taps palm, then palm taps chest".
The symbol for "forums" appears to be "closed fists with extended index fingers pointing
upwards--the left fist with its back to the reader, and the right one with its back to
the writer--touch face to face three times moving in a clockwise horizontal arc", for
example, if I'm reading it correctly.
*Muke!
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