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From:
"Karlin, Ben" Date: Wed Oct 28, 1998 3:21 pm Subject: Re: Iconicity (was Re: Frequently-Asked Questions) | ||||||||
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Angus' list of problems with SW is certainly thought-provoking. The one that concerns me most is of indexability. My interest in writing systems is long-time and parallels my background as a typographer. It is interesting to me that recently I have been involved in a number of conversations about problems with other writing systems and the esthetics that govern their use. Most notable is the development of the blackletter or fraktur faces in central Europe. They were also called "textur" faces; fitting since a page of this stuff has the text woven so tightly that the individual characters, even the words, were illegible, sacrificed for an overall texture and color to the page. Even in modern times there are sometimes esthetics beyond legibility that govern how a writing system is used. In setting type for documents I would frequently think of who the reader and what type of reading this would be, adjusting design to make reading easier or harder in the cases of texts that would require slow, careful reading. My point is that once a system gains widespread use, its use is adjusted to fit a variety of applications. I suspect that at some time the relationships of the various parts of a SW symbol will become codified so that it will be possible to index using SW. At present it is cumbersome but the number of people using SW at present is also teeny tiny. And our applications are, compared with other systems which have been used for centuries, rudimentary. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Ben Karlin Staff Interpreter for the Deaf, St Louis Psychiatric Rehabilitation Center 5300 W Arsenal St, St Louis, MO 63139-1494 Phone 314 644-8270 V/TTY | Fax 314 644-8115 ---------- > 2) searchability. A friend pointed out to me that SignWriter's use of > non-standardized coordinates (as well as using GIF images) means that text > in SignWriting can never be indexed and searched. Unless significant > changes are made to the software-internal representation of SignWriting > and some system is in place for displaying them on the Web, we'll never > see AltaVista in SignWriting, and you'll never be able to so much as look > up a name in an address book in SignWriting. > | ||||||||
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