gracemyz
commented
3 weeks ago From 2024-08-29 meeting: for now, CD-ASL whole hand locations will continue to be coded without the "contra" node, with the expectation that the conversion will eventually happen for all signs. However, in the future, hand locations should not automatically have the "contra" node appended; users will have to specifically code with or without the "contra" node. This is why we shouldn't just change the backwards compatibility function to append the "contra" node to all hand locations forever.
When we added in the option for hand locations to be 'ipsi' or 'contra,' we should have switched over so that all previous and future locations were specifically 'contra.' But this failed to happen, both in the backwards compatibility of the software and in the transcribers' continued transcriptions. It would be great to have a one-time conversion script that we can run all the coded files through that makes this update all at once.
Specifically:
Any coded location that starts with the "Whole hand" designator should be updated to be specifically the "Whole hand ... contra" version of that designator.
So e.g. all locations coded as "Whole hand" should now be "Whole hand - contra," all locations coded as "Whole hand > hand minus fingers" should now be "Whole hand > hand minus fingers > hand minus fingers - contra" etc.
The only exception is "Whole hand > Fingers and thumb > selected fingers and thumb," which doesn't have a 'contra' version anyway. But also, this would never have been used yet, so it should be safe to just ignore it entirely.