[Cialug] Interesting problem [OT?]

[Stuart Thiessen]

Hi, guys! I have an interesting problem. I'm doing my MA thesis on a  
writing system for Sign Languages called SignWriting (www.signwriting.org 
). I'm doing an analysis of the writing system and looking at how the  
system works with an eye how one day it could be incorporated into  
Unicode. I hope that this writing system will eventually be available  
in regular software products so Deaf people like me can have that as a  
way to write in our sign language (there are at least 200 sign  
languages in the world and possibly as many as 400-1000).

Anyway, my technical challenge is that the organization developing  
this writing system has published a PHP database of the symbols at: http://www.signbank.org/swis/data.php?subset=&bs_code=*

I need to get a offline dump of each of the basesymbol child pages  
listed on that page. I can't do a simple download of the page as HTML  
because the image file showing the symbol is actually a link to a  
script that finds the right symbol and plugs it in, so when I use  
programs like wget, a broken link for the symbol image appears when I  
try to look at it offline.

Then I tried to save each as a PDF, but that will take a lot of time  
to do manually for 639 pages. I haven't figured out a way to have  
Applescript or Python or other scripting language to create PDF  
documents for me.

So, I thought if any of you would have a suggestion on how I can  
automate this process. I do forsee the possibility that if they were  
to add new handshapes or other symbols in the systems, that it would  
be nice to let this automated system re-do the offline dump.

Thanks

Stuart