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From:  Stefan Woehrmann2
Date:  Fri Jul 27, 2001  10:09 am
Subject:  writing down the page Re: Re: ASL sign for "cockroach"


Dear Valerie and list members,

Valerie wrote :

> Of course typing and reading are two different things. SignWriter 4.4
> was not designed for our present way of writing, but I fudge it
> anyway, typing slowly and making the symbols move to where I need
> them...in other words...I am putting the reader's needs ahead of
> typing speed, since we do not have a better computer program right
> now.


When I started to type with SignWriter 4.3 I asked myself several times :
Is this really meant to be a way of writing a text . I was sooooooo slow.
It took sooooo long to type just a few signs. I felt like somebody who is
carving letters into a stone -- much too slow in order to produce texts of
any relevance.

Today things have changed. Everyday use of SW4.4 and the need for new and
long documents for my students helped me (forced me ;-) ) to become a
pretty fast typer ;-)) with the help of my growing dictionary !

Nevertheless - the main problem is not to get familiar with the keyboard or
the underlying funktions of the keys or the various options of the SW4.4
programm. From my point of view it is most important to get a clear idea of
the concept . That is perhaps the reason why I started so late with writing
by hand - and compared with typing I still feel very insecure ... The way
you explain special spelling problems is just the help and support è am
looking for in order to become a more competent SW scribe !

As there exist nothing else like SW you can compare with producing written
documents of any SL we should not feel too much disappointed that we cannot
type these documents as fast as alphabetic texts. I am no expert on history
of writing but I can imagine that in former times people allowed themselves
much more time to create "written" documents of any kind --- ha !

Stefan ;-)

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