Hi Valerie, Steve, SW-list friends - 


ha Valerie - I have to smile - I guess you and me are the only two in the
world who keep the good old DOS SW - Software at hand .. and to be honest I
worked with this program yesterday. 

But I cannot believe that you want to start others to use it. There are now
programs available that might be accepted by newcomers and teachers much
better. (Well - you and me - we know what they do not know... ;-)) ) 

Nevertheless - Steve is right - we need both - horizontal and vertical
writing. 

Today I feel very comfortable with both directions - ;-)) 

For the purpose of worksheets to develop spoken language skills I prefer
absolutely horizontal writing because of the intuitive understanding ... 

One problem - and Steve - asked for that is the "head bobbing"  that did not
happen in SW DOS because I used to add the headcircels at a given height in
the signwindow - once the new signs had been added to the dictionary they
all show a beautiful horizontal level throughout the signs.

Now with SignPuddle this is not true anymore. Whenever I add a new sign to
the SignPuddle-dictionary I have to do extrawork if I try to coppy and
rewrite a given sign, because now the headcircles move down in direction to
the middle of the signmager-window. In order to get nicely arranged
headcircles  well in our dictionary we need many of them as you already know
( ;-)  - I use the uppest horizontal line as kind of orientation - line.
Afterwards I add the other symbols that I need to write a given sign. 
Now - due to the new centering-procedure the heads are proper organized if
it comes to vertical writing- but it is a continuous and disturbing "head
bobbing" if we arrange the single entries in a horizontal way -

This is the answer to your second question Valerie. 

So far we take the signs just as they are to be found in the SignPuddle
dictionary. 

In the future our team is interested to create a special software (kind of
SignMaker " that allows to write the signs themselves instead to download
them from the SignPuddle dictionary. 
So we write - right now - horizontally - as you can find out if you type
words and look at the signs that show up ... 


Would be great to have the head as the constant height level - at almost 4/5
of the height of a sign window. 

This would allow you to read horizontal writing with less interruption
(caused by these head bobbing!)


Hope you are doing well - the last day of this year. 

All the best and a wonderful evening to all of you 

Stefan 


-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
Von: SignWriting List: Read and Write Sign Languages
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] Im Auftrag von Valerie Sutton
Gesendet: Samstag, 31. Dezember 2011 15:56
An: [log in to unmask]
Betreff: Centering signs in Horizontal SignWriting ….

SignWriting List
December 31, 2011

Hi Steve, Jonathan and Stefan -

Regarding programming horizontal writing...

When programming SignWriter DOS, I believe Rich Gleaves centered the signs
without any notice of the heads when pasting in from the dictionary - the
whole sign as a unit was centered …you can see this if you download DOSBox
for either Mac or Windows and install SignWriter DOS and play with the
program for a while… I just tried it...

DosBox
http://www.dosbox.com/

Download SignWriter DOS
http://www.signwriting.org/forums/software/sw44/index.html

but I remember there was a way to center signs with a keystroke in
SignWriter DOS and I cannot remember it right now - I would suggest writing
to Rich Gleaves to ask him -

And then the DELEGS program may be programmed differently - how do you
center a sign in DELEGS, Stefan?

Val ;-)

---------




On Dec 31, 2011, at 5:17 AM, Steve Slevinski wrote:

> Hi Jonathan & Stefan,
> 
> Happy New Year.
> 
> Horizontal writing is important and fundamental for using SignWriting.
I'm glad you are both involved with SignWriting applications.
> 
> Regarding horizontal writing, how do you center?  Is it based on the
center of the entire sign image?  Is it based on the center of the head &
trunk symbol cluster like vertical writing?  Other than head bobbing, does
it matter?
> 
> Looking forward to 2012,
> -Steve
>