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Welcome to the SignPuddle Information Network. This website contains the original work of Stephen E Slevinski Jr.

SignPuddle helps SignWriting work

1 Modern SignWriting v1
2 SignPuddle 1.6 Launch on July 20th, 2011
3 SignWriting Image Server 2 - development version
4 SignWriting MediaWiki Plugin (SWMP)
5 Visitor Messages

Modern SignWriting v1

Jan 12,2012...

ISWA 2010
ASCII encoding
Unicode: private use area
Syntactic decomposition
Historical foundation
International corpus
Full text processing
Stable design specifications

SignPuddle 1.6 Launch on July 20th, 2011

SignPuddle Online has been successfully converted from version 1.5 to version 1.6.

The major changes for SignPuddle 1.6 are structural and foundational rather than major improvements to the user interface. These changes will provide a pathway to the future and streamline the creation of more powerful viewer and editors.

Symbol Set

The SignWriting symbol set for SignPuddle has been updated to the ISWA 2010. The most notable change is the expansion of the movement symbols. You will notice the change in the symbol palette. All of the signs and sign texts have been converted from the ISWA 2008 to the ISWA 2010. The conversion has been thoroughly tested and should be 100% accurate. The ISWA 2010 is a focused refactor of the ISWA 2008. You can read about the specific changes: http://www.signpuddle.net/mediawiki/index.php/ISWA_2008#Successor

Preliminary Unicode

Symbol identification has been modified from the Symbol ID to the Preliminary Unicode string. This string is in agreement with what has been proposed before the governing bodies of Unicode Consortium. This string is equivalent to a purely ASCII string called the symbol key. We are planning a follow-up Unicode presentation in the beginning of 2012 and hope to be included in the official balloting. You can read the Unicode proposal: http://std.dkuug.dk/jtc1/sc2/wg2/docs/n4090.pdf

Word Structure

Each sign is represented as a separate word which is a string of sequential letters and symbols, replacing the previous methods of comma separated values and SWML. The new word structure sets SignWriting as a formal language with advantages for searching, sorting, and layout. The word structure will be explicitly defined and leveraged in the update to my Internet-Draft later this year.

Formal language definition: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formal_language

Previous version of Internet-Draft: http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-slevinski-iswa-2010-00

XML Data Set

The main data backend for SignPuddle has been updated to XML through the use of SignPuddle Markup Language files. Each SPML file represents an entire dictionary or document collection. These files are easy to backup, restore, and transfer. These files can easily be included with any program that can process XML.

SPML Document Type Definition: http://www.signpuddle.net/spml_1.6.dtd

SignPuddle 1.6 SPML puddle files: http://signbank.org/signpuddle1.6/data/spml/

Sign Text Justification

Sign Text justification forces the signs of a column to align with both the top and bottom, thereby removing the jagged appearance at the bottom when several columns appear side by side. The excessive space that previously occurred at the bottom of a column is redistributed between the signs in the column.

Sign Text justification also forces punctuation to remain at the bottom of a column, rather than allow punctuation to start a new column. The spaces between the signs in a column are compressed to pull a punctuation to the bottom of a column.

Scalable Vector Graphics

Within ColumnMaker, SVG support has been added. There are 4 automated vector tracings of the ISWA 2010 available. A 5th version of manual refinements is a work in progress. SVG support is planned throughout SignPuddle in the near future. The user will be able to choose between raster PNG images or SVG.