On Wed, 27 May 1998, Valerie Sutton wrote...
>5. And last...for several years we have been working on a new computer
>program called SignWriter 5.0, which is a totally new piece of software
>written in Java. We are not done, but I am hoping that we can have the
>first version ready for the new school year too. For those of you
>interested in computers, some of you probably wonder why it wasn't
>completed long ago! The only answer is time and money - and we have little
>of both. However, the benefits will be so great that I hope to devote time
>to this, this summer. I am working with java programmers. I am not a
>programmer myself, but I designed the symbols and keyboards, and work with
>the many spoken and signed languages that are a part of SignWriter. My part
>of the work has to do with editing the symbols themselves. Since we are
>moving from an MS-DOS platform to the Macintosh and Windows, the symbols
>themselves have to be fixed up dot by dot in a special editor, because the
>graphics is handled differently in these new machines. I am half way done
>with the symbol editing. I will keep you posted as to our progress.
____________________________
Good Evening SW List Members!
I hope all the Americans on the List enjoyed their 4th of July holiday
celebrations :-)
I am writing to report that this holiday weekend I worked until I am
"bleary eyed". All weekend I have been working on the "dot-by-dot" symbol
editing that is mentioned in my paragraph above. I am very excited because
this week, starting tomorrow, our Java programmers will be focusing the
entire week on finishing our "mini version" of SignWriter 5.0 for beta
testing. That is why it is so imperative that I also finish all of the
symbol editing too. I have completed all of the facial expressions,
movement symbols and body movement symbols. The only symbols left are about
half of the handshapes - so I hope I will be done with those by the middle
of the week. Meanwhile the programmers will be working on the internal
code. By the end of the week we hope we will have the "mini version" up and
running on both the Mac and Windows. However, the mini version will not be
ready for beta testing until I write a small manual for the beta testers to
understand what to do!
I am sure you can understand why I am so excited....creating the SignWriter
Computer Program, no matter what the version, has been back-breaking work
and it is nice to finally get to the "beta test" stage for 5.0. Once we
have gone through a beta test period, which may take months, we will start
adding more and more features. This "mini version" is only the beginning.
We have to test it to make sure that there are no "bugs" in the software.
Some of the new features already available in this "mini-version" are great
- like using the mouse instead of the keyboard -and the symbols and
background screens can be any color you choose (as if that matters :-) and
two different sizes of symbols available on the screen - that will be nice!
But the "mini-version" will only be for ASL for now - maybe by September we
can have the 14 other languages included - it all depends on how fast the
beta testers can find the bugs-ha!
Anyway - just want to share with you why I am so busy these days :-) I am
sure you all are busy too!
Have a terrific Monday -
Valerie Sutton :-)
https://www.SignWriting.org
Sutton at the DAC
Deaf Action Committee For SignWriting
Box 517, La Jolla, CA, 92038-0517, USA
(619)456-0098 voice
(619)456-0010 tty
(619)456-0020 fax
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