On Fri, Nov 28, 2008 at 02:28:23PM -0500, slevin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote: > Second, Unicode is used with sequential scripts: one character after > another. Our script is spatial: the words are characters written in space > based on coordinates. The words are sequential, but not the characters. > Even if we were part of the Unicode standard, I do not believe existing > applications could properly edit or display the words. I did a quick examination of your specification, and I couldn't find any documentation for how your control chracters and spatial coordinate system works in practice. Given that this seems to be critical for interoperability and for anyone else to be able to write software that utilizes your character set, it appears to me your specification may be incomplete. Something that may be useful would to be try to get someone else to create an independent implementation that can at least display your script, going solely from your specifications. That would be a very good sign that the specification completely specifies your new writing system. After all, the whole point of standardizing something is to allow multiple people to create implementations that can interoperate. So if you only have one implementation utilizing your scripting system, and you haven't yet built up an implementation community interested in utilizing your writing system in multiple applications that need to be able to interoperate with each other, standardization efforts may be a little premature. The other comment I will make is that using a writing system which isn't compatible with existing writing systems which are purely left-to-right (or right-to-left) will significantly hamper the development of application programs that can support your SignWriting. It means that instead of being able to use an unmodified version of, say, Open Office or some other word processing software, you will need to implement either your own word processing software, or at the very least, need to modify existing application programs one at a time to support your new writing system. I know you've spent a lot of time putting together a system which very accurately models the physical movements of signing. This is an approach similar to using a purely comprehensive description of every possible audible sound/phomeme that could be used in a spoken language, such that one writing system could be used for recording sounds used by all spoken languages --- the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is one such system that attempts this, for example. However, this might not necessarily be the most efficient way of encoding sign language, and if it requires the spatial coordinates into characters, this might not be the most appropriate encoding system for everyday use by deaf people, just as most people do not use the IPA for encoding spoken languages for everyday common use when they are writing letters, books, sending e-mail, etc. - Ted _______________________________________________ Ietf@xxxxxxxx https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf