| SignWriting List Archive 1 October 1997 - May 1998 |
November 21, 1997
MESSAGE TO THE SIGNWRITING EMAIL LIST
SUBJECT: SignWriting Chat Room
Date: Fri, 14 Nov 1997 22:16:35 -0500
From: Delamar Weber e Ronice M Quadros <dweber@neca.com>
To: Valerie Sutton <sutton@signwriting.org>
Hello Valerie!
I think that we need to have a space to write in SignWriting. Why we are not using this system to communicate with each other? We can do this by computer instead to use english, we need to begin this, because we believe in this system. Since this system is not used systematically, it will be very difficult to think in literacy using SignWriting. SignWriting need to be a "life" system every day, every time. Maybe, we can think more about how to make more systematic the use of SignWriting. And about the new software?
I am sorry for my mistakes in English and, actually, I think that if I had written in ASL I had a lot of them too!
Love,
Ronice
dweber@neca.com
Ronice M.de Quadros
Delamar Weber
115 Courtyard Lane
Storrs - CT 06268-2285 USA
(860) 429-1709
From the Desk of
Valerie Sutton
November 21, 1997
Hello Ronice!
Thanks for the excellent comment above :-)
In the future we hope to add a "SignWriting Chat Room" to our SignWriting Web Site. Hopefully the Chat Room will be available in 1998, as soon as we complete the new version of the SignWriter Computer Program, version 5.0. There is no question that it will happen in time, I am just not sure exactly when.
At present, this is how I envision the Chat Room working...
Participants will first need to download the new SignWriter Shareware so that SignWriting can be typed on their computers. Then, on our SignWriting Web Site, they would go to the SignWriting Forum, and enter "the Chat Room".
But .....this Chat Room will be very different than other chat rooms. Try to imagine typing to each other in the visual nature of signed languages - truly "thinking in a signed language" as facial expressions, handshapes, and movement symbols are typed down the screen in vertical columns. Participants will be able to share signs from different countries. The software will be flexible. Conversations can switch back and forth between signed and spoken languages, alternating between three typing modes: signs, fingerspelling and the Roman alphabet.
Perhaps we should have separate chat rooms for the different signed languages? For example, we could have an ASL Chat Room, and a DSL Chat Room and a BSL Chat Room etc - and people could switch languages and enter another Chat Room when they wish. What do you think?
All of this is in the design stage, so if you have good ideas please tell me!!
All good wishes -
Valerie
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