Off the Shelf Jarne Tenters

TKAOEUS on the Plover Discord found these magnetic phone stands that apparently work great as Jarne tenters. I'm very tempted to get some and try them out. Ingenious!

Plover 5.1.0 Released

Our wonderful lead dev Mkrnr says:

Plover v5.1.0 released

⚠️ Important Notice: Version 5 updates the graphical interface library from PyQt5 to PySide6, which means graphical plugins need to be migrated. Please check the Unsupported Plugins List before installing this version.

Highlights
Add support for Plover HID protocol based on plover-machine-hid plugin by @dnaq. (#1777)
Add code signing and notarization for macOS app. (#1769)
Dynamically update individual status icons while loading dictionaries. (#1400)

Please check out the GitHub release page for all changes and for the installer files.

A note regarding the macOS notarization: It is now possible to open the installed app without going to Settings > Privacy & Security and allowing it from there. Also, moving forward, you won't need to remove the Plover entry in Settings > Privacy & Security > Accessibility every time since macOS will recognize it as the same app, as long as you install an official release or a signed and notarized build from the main branch of the Plover repo. This Accessibility toggle needs to be removed one last time now since the previous version was not signed/notarized.

New Version of Spectra Lexer

mkrnr writes:

The plugin plover-spectra-lexer now supports Plover v5 and can be installed via the plugins manager. Note that I had to fork the repo by @incognition since I was not able to reach him. The new repo can be found here

New Versions of Popular Plugins

Mkrnr writes:

New versions of `plover-combo` and `plover-svg-layout-display` have been released that now support Plover v5 and can be installed via the plugins manager. Thanks a lot Kaoffie for donating your awesome plugins to the Open Steno Project!

Fill out the 2025 Open Steno Community Survey!

Our wonderful lead dev mkrnr writes:

The 2025 Open Steno Community Survey is out!

The survey is organized into five sections:
1. Your background in (and outside) stenography
2. Current and future stenography usage
3. Usage of and feedback on Open Steno learning materials
4. Hardware usage and feedback for hardware developers
5. Software usage and feedback for Plover developers

It takes around 20–30 minutes, so we're leaving it open for a month to give everyone a chance to fill it out.

Fill out the survey here.

Thank you for taking the time! Every response helps the Open Steno community grow and create better tools for all of us

Stenocadabra Demo Tool

Peter says:

Stenocadabra, Live display of steno strokes with translations. Only works with Plover hid device.
Vision
This tool was made for the purpose of making steno video demonstrations. Future plans include making this a game where you try to find all the combinations and words.
Maybe even visualize a web of words that are connected by how they are stroked. For example, words that are one stroke apart are connected by a line.

Novel Writing Season