>Thanks for the explanation and the advice.
>I agree with you that you need to focus on improving the SW program. God
>bless you efforts. I will do my best on my end.
>Pastor Ronald H. Dettloff
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May 24, 1999
Hello Ron & Everyone -
Thanks for this nice note. To fill you in on what is happening....
SignWriter 5.0 is our future computer program for typing signs. Right now
we have SignWriter 4.3, for MS-DOS. SignWriter 5.0 will be for both
Macintosh and Windows. It is sorely needed.
Since 1996 I have struggled with SignWriter 5.0. Part of the problem was
lack of money to finish the job. We now have a grant for the summer, and
that is exciting. I posted job announcements at universities and at
professional programmer's meetings. I now have over 40 resumes and I am
trying to decide who to hire. I have it down to four people - two
professionals and two very bright students. We may just be a team, and
share the load. I am interviewing three on Wednesday, and one on Thursday.
I am also writing up the "design" for the program - how do we want it to
work? Even though I already have excellent suggestions and ideas from the
past, and even though we already have much of it programmed...I am very
open to your new ideas. I cannot promise we can do everything you ask...but
if you ask...and I know about your ideas in advance...that will help us
design it for the future.
As you know, SignWriter 5.0 will give us flexibility to type down in
vertical columns, as well as type in other directions. You will be able to
choose your direction. You will also be able to choose if you want to read
Menus in words or signs or in both words and signs. For example, when I
test SignWriter 5.0 right now, I have my menus in ASL, not English.
And I am definitely going to improve the dictionary, so that it sorts by
Sign-Symbol-Sequence as well as by the Roman alphabet. And I think we need
other features in the dictionary - like searching for all the signs with
"such and such" handshape...or searching for all the signs that are marked
as "verbs", and then being able to print just that list of verbs, without
printing the whole dictionary.
Any other features you would like? I bet there are a lot, and I think this
is the time to tell me!
So feel free to write with your ideas and I will print your messages and
show them to our programmers.
Meanwhile, I have not forgotten your posting needs and I plan to get to it
after the programmers start working on the project.
Thank you, everyone, for your advice and friendship -
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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