New Online Steno Diagram Generator

Di is on fire lately. Not only does she have a new interaction design book available for preorder, but she also made this online steno diagram generator that takes both mouse and qwerty input and can be great both for generating great-looking steno stroke diagrams (downloadable as SVGs) and for demonstrating how steno works in a quick and easy way to curious newbies. Check it out!

New Typey Type Features

Di's ever-improving steno tutorial and drilling site, Typey Type for Stenographers, now has flashcards, plus three new lessons: a new introduction, Roman numerals, and top 200 words spoken on TV. Fantastic work as always, Di!

Free Dictation

Longtime Plover ally and professional stenographer Christopher Day has been recording and uploading dictation suitable for steno practice, at speeds ranging from 60 to 220 words per minute. If you've been looking to supplement text practice with audio practice, give his YouTube playlist a shot!

Steno Vimitation

Check out this video of Codepoke's steno workflow using his new Vimitation dictionary! Codepoke says:

Combining steno with Windows shortcuts creates a "best of both worlds" situation, for those willing to take the time. Deleting chars, words, and lines, moving within a document, and switching between programs can all be done with a single stroke, and without straining for hard-to-reach function keys. Commands can even be made to repeat from 2-10 times by adding just one stroke. Deleting 3 words in vim is a 3-stroker. Doing so with the vimitation dictionary is a 2-stroker.

Finger Drill Generator by Stenonymous

Hey, check out this finger drill generator, if you're a steno student or educator who wants some automatically generated drills to practice on. Thanks, Stenonymous!

New SOFT/HRUF in the Works

I got my Georgi last week and have been really enjoying it, but I want to give myself a little more time to put it through its paces before posting a full review. Hot on the heels of the newcomer, though, was a tantalizing preview of Ecca's latest SOFT/HRUF posted on the Plover Discord:

* currently micro USB but final one will be type-c
* micro SD slot for plover files + dictionary
* fully wired or wireless
* smaller interconnect cable between the halves if you want to use wired, but it is also wireless between the halves
* uses standard 18650 cells in a carrier that lets you pop out batteries and replace them at any time without tools

The SOFT/HRUF has always taken the cake in terms of keyfeel due to its custom steno-shaped keytoppers, but it looks like it's also going to be the first in the steno hobbyist market to work as a self-contained machine without necessitating a laptop. The wireless features and battery are also unique among non-proprietary machines, and I'm really excited to see it in action. I'm so impressed by all three major manufacturers of sub-$500 steno machines, and I can't wait to see what the future will bring for all three of them.

Steno at the Venice Biennale

From our amazing Italian steno friend Sillabix, a report about a video art project featuring an Italian stenographer on a Michela keyboard, displayed at this year's Venice Biennale:

Angelica Mesiti's exhibition ASSEMBLY opens with the Michela machine, a 19th century stenographic machine, modeled on a piano keyboard, which is used in the Italian Senate for official parliamentary reporting to ensure transparency within the democratic process. The machine's inventor, Antonio Michela Zucco, was originally inspired by musical notation as a universal language. Mesiti uses this device to code "To Be Written in Another Tongue", a poem by David Malouf, which is then arranged into a musical score by composer Max Lyandvert, and played by an ensemble of musicians, whilst performers, representing the multitude of ancestries that make up cosmopolitan Australia, gather, disassemble, and re-unite.

I was unable to find anything about Plover in particular in the press materials for the event, but Sillabix said "The Venice Biennale Art exhibition started today: thank you Australia for promoting steno (& Plover)," so I'm wondering if the exhibition might have been partially Plover-powered? Extremely cool if so, but even if not, I love seeing what happens whenever steno and art combine.