Friday, March 28, 2008

The other thing to consider is the timer. Eclipse doesn't work without it. DigitalCAT has an option to set the timer to zero, but it causes a lot of bugs, including improper stroke deletion and affixion. I can't stand the timer. Plover needs to process each stroke as quickly as possible, relate it to previous strokes (if applicable), and put it on the screen without delay. Then if the next stroke, combined with the previous, translates to something else, it should cleanly erase the old translation and display the new one. There should be no timer involved. I suppose this necessitates a buffer of at least 10 strokes (unlikely that any more than that would be linked together, though who knows; maybe a user-editable feature) to be held in memory. Each new stroke would prompt a reassessment of all 10, and the screen would be redrawn accordingly. This is the only way to make effective editing and CART display practical. But why have none of the other steno programs I've used been designed that way? Is it simply a legacy issue, or are there other obstructions? I hate having to flush Eclipse's buffer manually every few strokes. It's absurd.

1 comment:

  1. I'm too tired to give intelligent comments right now, but just wanted to say, love the blog! I will be checking it regularly.

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