Status of Current Tasks Page

I don't know how many of the people volunteering to work on the Plover Project read this blog but not the Google Group (our semi-official dev discussion group), but just in case there are a few, I'm posting this here as well as there. I just made a new page on the Plover Wiki, listing all the tasks that are currently in development (as well as the first names of the people who offered to make them happen), as well as some of the higher priority tasks from the Launchpad page that don't currently have any volunteers assigned. I hope it'll help us all keep track of each other a little better, now that Plover has expanded into this awesomely multivarious community-developed creature. If you're listed as someone assigned to a task, feel free to update the page with your current status, or if you want some help with your task, or to be unassigned to it, go ahead and note it down as well. And, of course, if you've never volunteered to help with the project but this list makes you want to, please go right ahead! We can always use more awesome coders, testers, hackers, and users at every level of expertise.

http://stenoknight.com/wiki/Status_of_current_tasks

Infinite thanks to everyone who's done such incredible work with the project, especially Pragma, Hesky, John, Jay, Gloria, and of course Plover's Primordial Demiurge, Josh. You guys are freaking amazing.

iStenopad Overlay: A Bust

Ever since iStenopad joined Plover in the free as in beer (though not as in speech) steno software ranks, I've been wanting to try it. Not because I really contemplated buying an iPad to use it with myself, but because I loved the idea of a simple overlay that could turn a touchscreen into a steno machine, and I was hoping that if it was really plausible, we could port Plover to Android and open up steno to a whole new sector of tablet owners. Sadly, it's too good to be true. It took me until now to try the app because the demo iPads you see at most electronics stores don't allow downloads from the App Store. But the computer store at the university I'm working for this semester had some unlocked iPads connected to WiFi, so I was finally able to download the app and give it a try. First I tried without the overlay. It wasn't promising. The lack of haptic feedback meant that even when I looked at my fingers, they'd tend to drift around and hit the wrong keys while missing the right ones. It was very slow, very inaccurate, and very frustrating. So I sent off for the silicone overlay ($45 plus $10 shipping), hoping that would give me enough haptic feedback to stay aligned with the keys. This morning I brought it to the computer store and spent about an hour trying to write on the iPad, with pretty dismal results. Not only were the keys still too mushy to keep my fingers from drifting off their marks, but the overlay itself kept sliding all over the place, and I wasn't able to get it to stick no matter how much I smoothed it down. I didn't try actually taping it to the iPad (since it wasn't my iPad), but even if I had, I'm not sure it would have mattered much. Unfortunately I think the keys are too close together to allow the necessary margin of error you need when dealing with such a small amount of physical feedback. If the keys had been firmer and more direct, I think I would have been able to hit my targets better, and I would have been able to tell by touch when the keys were registering and when they weren't. As it is, the only way I was able to tell which keys had been hit was by reading the display; I couldn't feel the difference between a hit or a miss based on feedback from the overlay. This is discouraging, because it makes me think that getting Plover to a mobile app won't be as simple as I had hoped. There are two things that might help to solve the problem, though. One would be using a tablet with a bigger footprint than the iPad, which would allow more separation between the keys and more margin for error. That's not completely ideal, though, because the bigger a tablet is, the less convenient it is to schlep around. Another option would be to wait until tablets with built-in locational haptics came on the market; if they buzzed just in the area underneath your finger, you wouldn't need the overlay to know where you're supposed to be pressing, or if a key has registered. A third option would be to use one's own body for haptic feedback. I experimented with wrapping the silicone overlay around my thigh and trying to write in steno without looking at the keys. It was far more successful; my brain's locational map of my leg kept my fingers from drifting around the way they did when they were touching an inanimate surface. If we could get some kind of flexible multitouch sensors going, a silicone overlay might do very nicely. But flexible multitouch panels are still pretty rare and expensive. Still, one day I'm hoping they'll be the answer to my mobile steno daydreams. In summary, the iStenopad is not anywhere close to a workable solution, and I'm kind of shocked that they're apparently selling expensive subscriptions to stenographers who want to use their iPads with their commercial steno software. I've heard from a lot of professional stenographers who tried iStenopad and then discarded it as too inaccurate and unwieldy, but I haven't heard of anyone who actually likes it enough to pay for the subscription. If you know of any, send them my way; I'd like to ask them some questions. Maybe I'm missing something. More likely, though, I think the promise of touchscreen steno has eclipsed the reality. I hope that won't always be the case, but for now it's back to the drawing board.

#a11y unlock

Plover Blog Accessibility: Partially Upgraded.

As Plover's been getting more and more users, we've gotten a number of people wanting to learn steno who are either blind or have low vision, and who requested an audio version of the Steno 101 series. I'm happy to say I've completed the first two lessons this weekend, and I'm going to try to get the rest of them done as soon as I can, with audio versions accompanying each new Steno 101 installment as it's released. (I know I've been promising a new installment for a really long time now, and it's all mapped out and just ready to be written up; I'm just waiting for the Plover Windows Port to be finished so that all Plover users are on the same page when trying out the new features, like command strokes and numbers. Work on that is proceeding, and I'm hoping it'll be done by the end of this week, fingers crossed.)

So here are the first two installments again, now audio described by yours truly:

Steno 101: How to Do It
Steno 101: Lesson Zero

I looked around to see whether there were any accessible embedded audio players, but didn't find anything on a cursory search, so I just linked each heading to an mp3 file; you can open them in a new tab and most browsers should play them automatically. I'm very new at this, so please let me know if I need to revise any of the files, and I'll do my best to re-record them as necessary. At the end of the project, I intend to put them all into a zip file and host them on the StenoKnight servers, so people can download them as a Steno 101 audiobook if they want to learn steno on the fly. Many thanks to our blind and low vision users for giving me the spur I needed to start on this project. Enjoy the first two lessons! More coming soon.

Analytics

Graph of visits for all pages hosted on http://stenoknight.com since November, 2009 (when I started using Analytics) until today:



I just thought it was awesome and hilarious. I love the internet so much.

New Donation Page

Wow, it's been an exciting couple of days. We've already collected $200 in Plover donations, and after receiving feedback from one donor, I've made a dedicated donation page for Plover, detailing exactly where the money goes. (Right now it all goes to help our devs write code for Plover without taking too much of a financial hit when they take time away from their day jobs or freelance work; later we might use some of it as seed money to start fabricating Plover hardware, like qwerty-to-steno keyboard overlays or low-cost USB steno keyboards that plug into a computer and immediately start outputting English when they receive steno input. I've never taken any money for Plover, and I don't intend to start. My own venal reason for founding the project was to bring more people into my profession so it doesn't collapse due to the ever-increasing shortage of stenographers. If I can help raise up the next generation of captioners, transcriptionists, and steno amateurs, I'll feel more than repaid for the money I've spent getting Plover developed.) Ever since landing on Hacker News, the interest in Plover has spiked dramatically, which is glorious. Later today I'm going to try to make an entry on our wiki detailing all the various jobs that we need help with and the current state of who's working on what. Thanks for all the email and offers of support I've gotten so far! It's so inexpressibly wonderful to see this tiny little two-person project explode into a complex and multivarious international community.

OpenSource.com Article on Plover

Longtime Plover ally Mel Chua has just written a fantastic article on OpenSource.com about Plover! Go check it out. If any of you have come to this blog via the article, welcome! Try out the demo on your qwerty keyboard, check out the Launchpad page, or join the Google group or the Aviary to talk with Plover users and devs about open source steno and the next steps for the Plover Project.

Plover 2.2.0 Released!

Woke up this morning to an email from Josh, Plover's dauntless programmer:

"Hi all,

I'm happy to announce the latest feature release of Plover! Version 2.2.0 includes the following features and fixes:

* a new graphical user interface that supports both older and newer versions of Ubuntu, with and without Unity
* auto-start configuration option
* hotkey commands to suspend/resume Plover, bring up the configuration dialog, and bring the main Plover window to the foreground
* support for the TX Bolt/Gemini TX protocol, which will open the way to using many Stentura machines
* protection against running more than one instance of Plover at a time
* proper handling of the number bar
* updated user guide


This is all fine and good, but what I'm happiest about is the high level of community involvement that went into this release, including Stan and Tony sending me a steno machine to test on (thanks, I'm finally ready to send it back!), the great suggestions for features and improvements to both the software and the user guide from many people on the mailing list, Hesky's seamless contribution of code to support the TX protocol (and ongoing experimental Windows port), generous financial support from various corners of the world, and, of course, Mirabai's relentless advocacy, encouragement, and testing.

As usual, the latest version can be downloaded from:

https://launchpad.net/plover

Also, for the first time, I've made Plover available from the official Python package index, which provides yet more methods of installing Plover for those adventurous enough to learn about it:

http://pypi.python.org/pypi/plover/

Please report any problems to the mailing list.

Happy stenographing, Josh"

This is awesome. I've been testing out this version for the past few weeks, and it is rock solid. Being able to use Unity is really convenient, and the number bar bugfixes mean that I can now write the Steno 101 lesson on numbers, fingerspelling, and metacommands that I've been planning for months! Look for that by the end of this week. The auto-start option is also great when you want to invoke Plover (I use Gnome-Do, so I only need to do Alt-Space, P, and Enter to set it going) and start writing steno right away without fiddling with the mouse. The new Plover Guide (PDF file) is also extremely useful, and we'll hopefully be mirroring it on the Wiki for easy reference fairly soon. So if you have Linux and a Sidewinder (or Majestouch or Noppoo Choc Mini or any other qwerty keyboard with n-key rollover) or a Gemini PR/TX machine or a Lightspeed or a Protege, install the new version and enjoy! If you don't have Linux, either take the plunge and install Ubuntu as a dual-boot option, or wait a few more days until the Windows port is complete. Feel free to leave feedback -- feature requests, bug reports, et cetera -- in comments here, at the Launchpad page, on the Google group, or on the (newly restyled) Aviary. Many, many thanks to Josh for his fantastic work. We've come a hell of a long way from "catalogue catalogue Log Cat log".