SignWriting inUnicode Next

Updated for UTC # 152 (July 31st - August 4, 2017)a Unicode Technical Committee meeting in Redmond,

WAby Stephen E Slevinski Jr

in association with the Center for Sutton Movement Writing

Version 3

The Big Umbrella ofthe Center for Sutton Movement

Writing All sign languages

supported right now.

5+ years of stable and free standards.

Many implementations from separate groups.

Various hand writing styles.

Formal SignWriting (FSW) specification

“a worldwide character standard”

The Unicode Standard

Principles of the Unicode Standard• Universal repertoire

• Logical order• Efficiency• Unification

• Characters, not glyphs

• Dynamic composition• Semantics• Stability

• Plain Text• Convertibility

“used for representation of text for computer processing.”

http://unicode.org/standard/principles.html

“addresses only the encoding and semantics of text.”

“The Unicode Standard groups characters together by scripts in blocks.A script is any system of related characters.”

Since 2015, there are 672 accepted charactersin the Sutton SignWriting block.

a complex script with a wide variety of processing available

Sutton SignWriting

With an additional 17 control characters,Sutton SignWriting can be encoded using full Unicode strings.

F1 R1

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 A B L M R

Analogs of these characters have been in use for 20 to 30 years.

Sutton SignWriting Characterssince Unicode version 8

DescriptionBase Characters

Fill Modifiers 2 to 6

Rotation Modifiers 2 to 16

Unicode Range

U+1D800 to U+1DA8B

U+1DA9B to U+1DA9F

U+1DAA1 to U+1DAAF

672 characters already accepted.

The Center for Sutton Movement Writing

Proposal for Full Unicode

17 new characters for full script support.

DescriptionFill Modifier 1

Rotation Modifier 1Numbers 0 to 9

Sequence Marker (A)SignBox Marker (B)Left Lane Marker (L)

Middle Lane Marker (M)Right Lane Marker (R)

Proposed UnicodeU+1DA9AU+1DAA0

U+1DAB0 to U+1DAB9U+1DABAU+1DABBU+1DABCU+1DABDU+1DABE

Fix Sorting and Simplify Processing

Under the triadic symbol definition, each symbol is writtenas 3 Unicode characters of a base, a fill, and a rotation.

“The standard retains the order of characters in a source set where possible. When the characters of a script are traditionally arranged in a certain order—alphabetic order, for example—the Unicode Standard

arranges them in its codespace using the same order whenever possible.”http://unicode.org/standard/principles.html

Fill Modifier 1Rotation Modifier 1

U+1DA9AU+1DAA0

Using a binary string comparison, efficient sorting is available for all programming languages and applications.

Number Characters for Distance

Numbers 0 to 9 U+1DAB0 to U+1DAB9

Distance is fundamental to the meaning of a sign.

Formatting

CAT

C A T

C A T

Meaning

Sequence Marker

Supports multiple theories

Not formatting nor style

Meaning that can not be derived from main string

Rendered in dictionary

A = U+1DABAMarks the start of the

temporal prefix

Temporal Prefix

SignBox MarkerB = U+1DABB

Marks the start of the SignBox cluster

Lane MarkersLeft = U+1DABC

Middle = U+1DABDRight = U+1DABEMarks the lane of the SignBox for vertical

writing

Complex Script Supportwith the Universal Shaping Engine

Full Script Encoding

MicroSoft VoltTrueType Font Import

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/Typography/volt.aspx

Using characters forstructural markers

and numbers

Utilizing the GPOS featurewith cartesian coordinates

Formal SignWriting

Regular Expressions

Query Strings

SVGUnicode

TrueType Font

10% to 50% reduction

15 to 50 times expansion

process million of characters per second

search results

15 times expansioncharacters for symbols

CSSstyle text

JS

Isomorphic Unicode

6 KB zipped

16-bitSignWriting Server

SVG Shapespaths without Unicode text and fonts

Remote Website

Open Type FontTargeting MS’s Universal Shaping Engine

Formattingstyle text

Discussion Ideas2-Color FontsSignWriting relies on a 2-color font. Currently, SignWriting mimics a 2-color font by using 2 TrueType Fonts: one for the line and another for the filling. If you have any experience with 2-color fonts, let’s discuss the possibilities.Glyphs with 2 Types of SpaceSignWriting creates signs as 2-dimensional arrangements of symbols. The glyphs for the SignWriting symbols have 2 types of space: a positive space and a negative space. The positive space is visible and reveals the line or shape of the glyph. The negative space is set to a background color or made transparent. When 2 symbols overlap, the symbols are placed in order on a 2-dimensional canvas. The negative space of the top symbol will overwrite the positive space of the symbol underneath. Current software uses a background color for the negative space. MicroSoft has a solution for making the negative space transparent and still overwriting the positive space of the symbol underneath.

SignWriting Design, With Three Examples and Their

Representation

http://www.unicode.org/L2/L2015/15219-signwriting-design.pdf

SignWriting in Unicode Next

by Stephen E Slevinski Jr

http://signpuddle.com

slevinski@signwriting.org

http://www.slideshare.net/StephenSlevinski/presentations