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From:
Valerie Sutton Date: Tue Dec 22, 1998 2:19 am Subject: Switching Between Dictionaries | |
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>PLEASE TELL ME HOW THESE SIGNS ARE ADDED TO THE SW DICTIONARY? >Ronald Dettloff, Pastor >The Deaf Church >20880 Ten Mile Road >St. Clair Shores, Michigan 48080 > ___________________________ December 21, 1998 Hi Ron! I know that you have the full SignWriter Computer Program, with the notebook with five instruction manuals. In your third manual, called SignWriter-At-A-Glance, you will find a whole section, section 4, pages 24-25, devoted to the details of creating dictionaries in SignWriter. And in manual 4, the Reference Manual, you will find instructions on page 34 and 62. For example, you could start a totally new dictionary file just for religious signs. To do this, start SignWriter. You are now at the main menu. 1. Type Alt-S for Setup Command. 2. Type D for Dictionary. 3. Type the new name for a new dictionary file, for example: Bible 4. Press Return, or Enter. Then Y for yes. 5. The active dictionary is now named "Bible". It is a blank dictionary. 6. Now open a document. To use the dictionary, type Alt-D for Dictionary. Try to search for a sign. You will find the dictionary is blank, with no signs. So it is ready for you to add your new signs. Later, if you want to switch back to the main ASL dictionary that came with SignWriter, just go back to the main menu, and type Alt-S for Setup, and D for Dictionary. And then change the name of the dictionary back to 001, which is the name of the original USA dictionary with 3000 signs. This is also an excellent trick for those writing several different signed languages. You can switch to the ASL dictionary, find a few signs that are similar to signs in other signed languages, copy them into your document, and then switch back to the Nicaraguan dictionary or whatever other dictionary you are working with...and then paste those same signs from the document into your other dictionary. Once you get the hang of it, you can switch between dictionaries quite quickly. Once you have created a new dictionary file, named Bible, quit the SignWriting program, and take a look at the listing of files in your SignWriter folder or directory. You will see two new files have been added to the listing, with these names: swbible.dic swbible.din In other words, all dictionaries need two files to function: .dic and .din So, if you want to send Caroline your new dictionary, send Caroline both .dic and .din files. Caroline's address is an AOL address, and I understand you can only send one file at a time as an attached file to AOL. If that is the case, then you will have to attach the two files to two separate email messages. But without both of them, Caroline will not be able to read the dictionary on her end. When your two files are received, they can be placed in the SW directory. Then, when SignWriter is opened, they can switch to your Bible dictionary file, and then create the .GIFs we discussed earlier. Valerie :-) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Valerie Sutton at the DAC Deaf Action Committee for SW SignWriting https://www.SignWriting.org Center For Sutton Movement Writing an educational nonprofit organization Box 517, La Jolla, CA, 92038-0517, USA ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ |
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