SignWriting List
September 1, 2014

Steve and Yair -
This is absolutely beautiful work and really groundbreaking - Thank you!

And thank you for pointing out to us, that inside Chrome and Safari, it opens really tiny, but computers have ways of enlarging the screen…as Steve mentions below…and if you learn those keystrokes for enlarging your screen view, you can enlarge the SignWriting articles in the Wikipedia to read them well…

And the fact that the Wikipedia is written in the good-quality symbols of SVG is very important - it looks great -

And I love the fact that you can select signs and phrases and even create links in SignWriting…and even usernames can be in SignWriting now… 

And thank you Steve for giving us this tour of the Wikipedia:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zCOWJ_-XQBg#t=3025

So now, we need to discuss more what volunteers can do to help...

Yair mentioned this:

On Vertical Writing support in Mediawiki, which is necessary for the sign language Wikipedias: A Mediawiki architecture meeting was held regarding Vertical Writing support about six weeks ago, and Brion Vibber from the Wikimedia Foundation agreed to provisionally look into extending CSSJanus so that it can rotate the CSS appropriately for vertically-oriented pages. If you're good with PHP, please consider volunteering to help out with the CSSJanus work. 


Can you explain more about what is needed?

Val ;-)

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On Sep 1, 2014, at 5:22 AM, Stephen E Slevinski Jr <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

Hi Yair Rand and List,

The ASL Wikipedia main page looks amazing in Chrome.  It uses the Vertical Writing Mode to display the content.  For Vertical Writing Mode, the page scrolls to the right, rather than down.

The sign text is written in vertical columns.  Each column ends at the bottom of the visible page and a new column appears to the right.  Text that does not fit in one column will flow into the next.

If you resize the browser window on the ASL Wikipedia main page, you can watch the text reflow between the columns.  When resizing the window, notice that punctuation never starts a column.  Very nice touch Yair Rand.

The images are SVG created by an image server.  The pages load very quickly.  Every sign image is cached in your local browser.  Click on a few links and then go backwards in the browser history.  Notice that the pages load instantly.

Zooming in on the page will also reflow the text.  If you think the signs are too small, resize the text.  On Mac, [Command]+ will zoom a page.




There is a lot of technical infrastructure that makes the ASL Wikipedia work within the Wikimedia movement.  For my presentation 31 at the Symposium, I have slides (5-7) about Wikimedia, Wikimedia Labs, and Wikimedia Incubator. 
http://www.signwriting.org/symposium/presentation0031.html

If you would like to see a demo of Wikimedia Incubator, watch the SignWriting Symposium 2014, Day 4 starting at 50:25.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zCOWJ_-XQBg#t=3025

Any person, for any sign language is invited to join Incubator.  The SignWriting project on Incubator is still young and there are a lot of technical requirements, but we need help from every type of person.  Dig into the movement, see what you can learn, and see what you can contribute.

Thanks Yair Rand for the help on Incubator.  Good luck with the keyboarding.  I hope to give you feedback soon.

Regards,
-Steve
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SIGNWRITING LIST INFORMATION

Valerie Sutton SignWriting List moderator [log in to unmask]

Post Messages to the SignWriting List: [log in to unmask]

SignWriting List Archives & Home Page http://www.signwriting.org/forums/swlist

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