Hello. My name is Valerie Sutton and I 
received a question:  
How do I write SignWriting
on the web? or How do I register
signs or write signs and post them on
the
web? Well, you can write by hand, by the
way, and that I did in the beginning of
SignWriting, of course, before software
was developed, and there are Lessons in
SignWriting Handwriting on the web under
the Lessons section in SignWriting.org. I
taught that course and it was really
wonderful. People learned how to write by
hand, by just doing it. If you wonder how
how to do it? Is there a skill? The best
thing is to just do it. You look at a
document that's already been perhaps
typed by a computer. That's okay but then
you can practice by writing what you see
and we write down the page and you just
write one symbol after the other down
down and you will see you will get good
at writing by hand. But if you want to
write by computer I would suggest that
we have some beautiful computer programs
that you can use. Both today and
yesterday there is an enormous history
of software development for writing SignWriting 
on the web and that is one of 
the reasons why SignWriting spread to 
over 60 countries is because we really 
do have beautiful software and we owe a 
debt of gratitude to every software 
developer that has worked with 
us. Thank you to Richard Gleaves who 
developed the SignWriter Computer 
Program. It started out on the Apple 2E 
and then went to the Apple 2C and then 
it went to SignWriter DOS which was the 
MS DOS. So the SignWriter Computer 
Program was the first word processor or 
I say sign language processor in the 
world. We created a way to be able to 
write SignWriting and in those days we 
weren't on the web yet. That was before 
the internet. This was in 
1986. Richard Gleaves worked on the 
development of the SignWriter Computer 
program from 1986 to 
1996 and in those 10 years we did 
finally get on the internet in 1996. Our 
first website was posted in September 
1996 and within just a 
month, Antonio Carlos da Rocha Costa, a 
professor from Brazil, came and visited 
me in La Jolla, California and we were 
writing sign languages together because 
of the internet, which put out the information. 
And thank you, Antonio Carlos, for coming 
to visit me and it is pretty remarkable 
that you also 
developed uh “SW-Edit” which is a 
program that was used in Brazil for 
quite some time but the SignWriter 
Computer Program was used all over 
Brazil. In the beginning with Mariana 
Stump, the first SignWriting teacher in 
Brazil, who was a student of um Antonio 
Carlos da Rocha Costa, and then of course 
Ronice de Quadros came to visit me and she 
also helped with everything. Just so you 
know, the SignWriter Computer Program, at 
that time, had seventeen keyboards for writing 
seventeen different FingerSpellings from 
seventeen different sign languages 
and people were ordering the computer 
program all over the world before we 
even had the internet. So they were doing 
it right directly on their MS DOS 
computer and then the world changed and 
MS DOS started being sort of moved over 
here and people started using the 
Macintosh and Windows. So on the 
Macintosh we developed something 
called SignBank One and Two and that 
was by Michael Ogawa and then later a 
new SignBank was developed in the 
FileMaker Pro program for Apple and it 
was was done by a programmer named Todd Duell. 
Thank you Todd Duell for 
SignBank. and then in 1996 when Richard 
Gleaves moved on to 
Qualcomm, uh a programmer named Rich 
Kadel developed the SignWriter DOS 
program further to work with SignWriter 
with Java, so we called it the SignWriter 
Java program and it got mostly 
finished, but not completely, but thank 
you Rich Kadel. And that SignWriter Java 
program is still downloadable on the 
SignWriting site and so is the MS DOS 
SignWriter DOS program, if you use DOS 
BOX and then we also had new 
developments after that for example 
SignWriter Tiger by Daniel Noelpp and that 
was funded in Europe by Ingvild Roald and 
other wonderful countries. Thank you for 
your help, and that program only got 
partially finished. These are very hard 
programs. We had a SignWriter Python. Can 
you imagine? All these programs. They're 
developed by a man named Lars Majewski. 
Thank you Lars, and then in 2004 we met 
Steve Slevinski and Steve developed SignPuddle 
and we had 1 and 2, and now we're 
in SignPuddle 2, um but then he 
also developed a SignPuddle 3 and then 
Steve also developed FSW. That's 
important, where we can use ASCII symbols 
to actually write SignWriting and he 
also developed SWU for putting 
SignWriting symbols into Unicode. Then 
there was Michael Everson who worked 
with all of us to get SignWriting into 
Unicode and it is because of Steve going 
to the Unicode meetings that we were 
able to get SignWriting into Unicode 8. 
It never got finished properly in that 
that's why Steve has done such a great 
job to develop something further called 
SWU. And then there's Jonathan Duncan who 
gave us, wow,  
so many things. uh There’s SignWriter  
Studio. It was a program on Windows
only on the actual computer but not
on the internet but you can download it  
still on our websites thank you Jonathan
and Jonathan also gave us apps and other
programs like the QuickSignEditor
where on the web you can actually type
in connection with another program by  
Steve Slevinski called SignMaker
2017. So the list of programs go on. I
want to thank Jonathan for the app the
SignWriterSW App and I want to
thank Steve Slevinski for his ongoing
development of the SignWriting Web
Components that will give other software
developers a chance to develop their own  
websites using SignWriting and I want
to thank Amit Moryossoff for developing a way
to do essentially Google Translate.
I'm hoping in time that will happen  
where it's very hard but they're
developing it so working with Steve with
his SignWriting Web Components to try
to get it so that we can actually use
Google Translate for SignWriting and  
spoken languages just like we use it for
spoken languages right now. So you can  
see there's a huge amount of people who
are using SignWriting with computers. So  
how do you register signs on the web? I'm  
telling you right now. Take a course from  
Carlos Christian on the web. He's on
Lesson 9 tonight this is November 20th
2023, or you can learn all the other
lessons 1 through 9 in which Carlos in
Portuguese and Libras with interpreters
that are really skilled shows how to use
SignPuddle 2  
and the class uh is just a wonderful
course with people responding in all the
messages on the side you know and and I
come in to say hi everybody and
that's um what we do so if you want to
learn SignPuddle 2 and you know
Portuguese or Libras I highly suggest  
Carlos Christian's course on how to use  
SignPuddle 2. I can send you those links.
You can write to me at any time sutton@
signwriting
.org