MSW:Sorting Terminology

11. Sorting Terminology
Terms are signboxes with an optional prefix as an ordered list of symbols. The term prefix is ordered in 1 dimension, whereas a signbox is ordered in 2 dimensions. The term prefix is distinct from the signbox, but will often use the same symbols. Neither structure can be automatically derived from the other.

11.A. ISWA Sort Order
The symbols of the ISWA have been ordered in a meaningful and international manner. This ordering is evident in the symbol IDs and the symbol codes. This ordering has been maintained in the various encoding forms and allows for sorting using a binary string comparison.

Symbol orders other than the default ISWA order are not directly supported. This may be an issue if a language group chooses an alternative order for their specific hand shape subset. It is advised to maintain the same hand shape order as the ISWA for all subsets. Otherwise, sorting will require the addition of an extra layer of processing such as a custom Unicode sorting table.

11.B. Explicit Prefix
A term prefix is a list of writing symbols and/or detailed location symbols. A valid term prefix must contain at least one symbol and can not contain punctuation. The term prefix is used to define a temporal order.

There are several theories on the best way to structure a term prefix. The most productive is based on the SignSpelling Sequence theory of Valerie Sutton. A SignSpelling Sequence is structured as a series of starting handshapes followed by optional movements, transitional handshapes, movement, and end handshapes. Only symbols from category 1 (hands) and category 2 (movement) should be used in this first section. The last section of the sequence should contain symbols of dynamics & timing, head & face, or body: categories 3, 4, and 5.

Detailed location symbols from category 6 can be used in a term prefix, but are rarely (if ever) needed for a sequence in general writing.

11.C. Sorting Unordered SignBoxes
Signboxes are ordered in 2 dimensions and as such do not have a normative 1 dimensional order. It is difficult to correctly sort a list of signboxes that do not have term prefixes.

A possible solution is to search a data source for terms that are an approximate match for each signbox without a term prefix. The term prefix from the search results can be prepened to the signbox without a term prefix so that sorting is possible and meaningful.

Given a signbox as: M518x529S14c20481x471S27106503x489

A query string can be constructed by replacing the lane marker and maximum coordinate with the query string for terms of “QT”. A first attempt could search for an exact match by adding a variance of 0 by appending “V0” to the end of the query string.

Resulting query string: QTS14c20481x471S27106503x489V0