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From:  Valerie Sutton Date:  Sun Apr 18, 1999  3:39 pm Subject:  SignWriting Report April 18, 1999

SignWriting Report Sunday, April 18, 1999 Dear SW List Members - Hope you all are doing well. Here is a summary of what has been happening in my office, in the past two weeks.... 1. Swiss-German Version of SignWriter. Today I am preparing a special version of our SignWriter Computer Program in the German spoken language, with a Swiss-German fingerspelling keyboard! I am doing this for researchers in Switzerland. They translated certain computer commands into German for me, and now I am entering the German commands into our computer program and creating this special version for them. Until now, SignWriter was available in 8 spoken languages (commands on the screen only, not the manuals), but now German commands will be available for people too. So German is our ninth spoken language. Swiss-German fingerspelling is our 15th fingerspelling keyboard. 2. Increased Requests for Information In the past two weeks I have received 35 requests for SignWriting Information Packets, which I sent all over the world - to Peru, Ecuador, Brazil, Austria, Germany, France, Canada, and the USA. Nice to have so much interest. Orders have also increased. This helps our nonprofit organization continue. 3. New Products and Photos On Friday, a student in photography offered to come help me. We took photos of all of our books and videos. I plan to create a new brochure with product photos. I will also add the photos to our web site, so it is easier to order from the web. I have designed new packages. The Lessons In SignWriting Video Series, and the Deaf Perspectives on SignWriting Video Series will soon come in video cases. Inside each case is a slot for two videos, and a place to hold the booklets that come with the videos. This makes it easier for libraries to place the videos on library shelves. The video cases have a spine, that looks like a real book. 4. Fingerspelling Fonts for the Macintosh and Windows Years ago we had fonts for the Macintosh. I created them with an old program called "Fontastic", which no longer exists. Fontastic became the famous program called "Fontographer", which was created by Macromedia. Two weeks ago I wrote to Macromedia, explaining that we were a nonprofit and that everyone is volunteering their time. We would be happy to link to Macromedia's web site, if they could donate one copy of Fontographer to us, so we could develop SW Fingerspelling Fonts, which will be downloadable from our SignWriting Web Site. To my great pleasure and surprise, I received a phone call from Macromedia, saying that they will donate if we give them acknowedgement on our web site. This is a $700 donation - the software is expensive. Of course I am thrilled to collaborate with Macromedia in this way, and they mentioned they may help us with other software too. Yesterday, I received Fontographer in the mail!! I was so excited. So I will now be working on the SW Fingerspelling Fonts and hope to have them ready in the next few months. The SW Fingerspelling Fonts are separate from, and are not connected to, the SignWriter Computer Program. The SignWriter Computer Program also has fingerspelling "keyboards", which are not the same as fonts. The SignWriter program is far superior to fonts, because with SignWriter you can manipulate the symbols to do all kinds of wonderful things that a plain font cannot do. However, the SW Fingerspelling Fonts for the Mac and Windows have positive uses too. They are nice because they can be used with other established programs such as Microsoft Word. In your listing of fonts on your computer, you see names of the fonts, like Helvetica, Courier, etc....and if you install the SW Fingerspelling Fonts, they will be listed in the same place. Then you can start a document, such as in Microsoft Word, and switch to SW Fingerspelling UK, and type English, and instead of English, two-handed UK fingerspelling will appear in your document! The Fonts are not hard to create. My only problem is time - I wish there were 48 hours in one day instead of 24!! But when I do complete them, I will announce it, of course. 5. International Use of SignWriting In the past two weeks, I have received extensive reports from people using SignWriting in Brazil, Switzerland and France. In Switzerland, they are translating our Lessons In SignWriting Textbook into German - which is a great honor. They also want to do the SignWriting diagrams in Swiss-German Sign Language. I hope in time the researchers doing this work can tell us more about their project in their own words. I will be helping them as much as I can. In Brazil, I understand that the dictionary work is going well, and I have been asked to edit the work, which I will be happy to do. There has been some interest from the media in Brazil, I understand. SignWriting literature was distributed at a conference in Vienna, Austria earlier this year. A school in Toulouse, France wants to translate our books into French and French Sign Language. And even DanceWriting is doing well. Three days ago I received a phone call from Norway. I assumed it was someone using SignWriting there, only to find that the phone call was about DanceWriting. As you all know, DanceWriting was used in Denmark with the Royal Danish Ballet, back in 1974. And even though I know that it is used by individual dancers in several countries, I have been so absorbed with SignWriting that I have not paid it much attention in recent years. Well...the phone call from Norway was a surprise...it was the Senter for Dansekunst - The Center for the Art of Dance - in Oslo, Norway. They are interested in using DanceWriting in their designs for brochures which they disseminate throughout Norway. They looked at the many dance notation systems that exist (there are hundreds of dance notation systems), and decided that DW was the most visual of all the systems. It lends itself to their artistic designs. They are even considering designing fabric with DanceWriting figures - what a surprise! So now I have gabbed about all kinds of subjects! I hope you all will feel free to share your work with us too - If you are using SignWriting, we would love to hear about your project.... Have a wonderful Sunday!! Valerie :-) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Valerie Sutton SignWriting https://www.SignWriting.org The DAC, Deaf Action Committee for SW Center For Sutton Movement Writing an educational nonprofit organization Box 517, La Jolla, CA, 92038-0517, USA ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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