Hello Rubens Almeida, Yair Rand, Adam Frost, Steve Slevinski, Jonathan Duncan, Rich Gleaves and the research group in Santa Catarina, Brazil!

What a pleasure to hear from you, Rubens. Your LIBRAS SignWriting projects, and Wikipedia articles in LIBRAS using the RAND Keyboard, are an inspiration to me and so many around the world. Thank you for our continued communication.

There are actually several different Keyboards designed to type SignWriting symbols, however, in this message, I will focus on the RAND Keyboard:

Wikipedia articles can be written in SignWriting with the RAND Keyboard. For example, here are two examples of articles in Wikipedia written with the RAND Keyboard. One article is Brazilian and one is Tunisian (must be viewed on a computer):

TUNISIAN SIGN LANGUAGE

The RAND Keyboard was developed by Yair Rand, first presented at the SignWriting Symposium 2015. Plus there were updates in 2016. Thank you Yair!

Here are some important links:

Use the RAND Keyboard on the Web:

The version without the plaintext options:
https://swkb-35431.firebaseapp.com/plain.html

SignWriting Symposium Presentation 41:

"The Javascript-based SignWriting Keyboard for Use on Wikipedia and throughout the Web” by Yair Rand

Instruction Manual #1 for the RAND Keyboard by Dali Balti

On the web, Yair’s email address is:

Yair Rand
August 30, 2016
[log in to unmask]

As far as I know, the RAND Keyboard is still functional but maybe Adam and I and others can test it to see? Can you help, Adam?

Thank you again, Yair, for your generous gift of a keyboard, which has been used to write many articles in Wikipedia and it works on the web too...

PS. Next message I will tell you about other keyboards for SignWriting.

On Nov 19, 2020, at 6:56 AM, Profo Rubens Almeida <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

Hi Valerie, Adam and Steve,
and also to all members of the SignWriting List!
The research group in Santa Catarina - Brazil, needs your support to explain the following questions that will help direct research related to the use of the specific keyboard for Libras Writing by the SignWriting system:
1) Is the SignWriting RAND keyboard functional?
2) Is it possible to type SignWriting more quickly and quickly using the RAND keyboard than other software?
3) Is the keyboard in question still active? If so, are there reports of people using it to write Wikipedia articles in written sign languages? How many can you measure?
4) In addition to Wikipedia, is it possible to use the SignWriting RAND keyboard in another virtual environment, websites? Or install it on the computer for producing texts in SignWriting? As in Microsoft programs?
5) How to learn to use the SignWriting RAND keyboard? Are there courses? Or teaching materials for this purpose?

We thank you for your attention and support.

--

________________________________________________

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
Join, Leave or Change How You Receive SW List Messages http://listserv.valenciacollege.edu/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=SW-L&A=1