Saturday, December 29, 2012

Dictionary Converter!

I just got back from a trip to Missoula and Seattle yesterday, so I've got to apologize for not being on top of Plover stuff for the past few weeks, but I had to check in to let you guys know about something pretty exciting. I know a few professional stenographers and steno students have been following Plover for a while, but they haven't had the chance to get their feet wet with it, because until now there hasn't been a way to easily convert their own dictionaries from rtf/cre format (which is the universal format exported by commercial steno software) into json format (which is the format used by Plover). Thanks to Hesky, our amazing lead developer, the wait is over! Introducing...

The Plover Dictionary Converter!

I haven't even gotten a chance to test it yet (though that's at the top of my list of things to do now that I'm home again), but I wanted to let everyone know about it. It's currently accessed via the command line, though I hope that we'll be able to get a more user-friendly GUI version of it eventually, and hopefully even integrate it into Plover itself. If you try it and it gives you any hassle, feel free to lodge a bug report at the github; it'll help Hesky refine it and improve it for the future. This is really going to help in bringing Plover to the court reporting, captioning, CART, and student communities, and I'm pleased as punch.

Oh, and just one more thing. The Aviary (Plover's user forum) has been pretty quiet lately, both from regular users (which isn't too unusual, since it's a pretty small community at the moment) and from spammers (which is, since until recently we were getting nearly 100 spam messages and user sign-ups per day). Happily, the latest spam-trapping tools I've put in place have proven wonderfully effective, so I've been able to remove moderation from first-time posts. If that's been holding you back from signing up for the forum, it's your lucky day. Now you can join and post unmoderated to your heart's content. I reserve the right to reinstate first-post moderation if the spam gets bad again, but here's hoping we've got those spammers licked for good. If forum-style discussion isn't your thing, there's also always the Google Group, which tends to have more technically oriented discussions about the development of Plover and the future of steno learning, rather than the day-to-day, boots-on-the-ground conversation you tend to find at the Aviary. Feel free to join either or both!

13 comments:

Unknown said...

Using Plover with my own dictionary is such a dream come true. Thanks Hesky!

stepb.rick said...

I posted a couple of messages to the Aviary but I got a message about them needing approval.

Mirabai Knight said...

Wow, sorry about that! Could have sworn I'd turned post approval off. I approved the posts. Now I'm gonna go back into the admin settings to see what I did wrong. Apologies!

Anonymous said...

I just stumbled upon Plover and these pages and I am quite intrigued. Unfortunately I`m not able to download and test it before I get myself a new computer (and keyboard). I can`t wait though!

Until then I have a question. My mother-tongue is Norwegian, how difficult would it be for me to obtain a Norwegian dictionary or make one myself?

Kudos for a great project!

Mirabai Knight said...

Hi! My mother's Norwegian (she moved to the US when she was 23), and though I don't speak it, I have a lot of fondness for it as a language. Unfortunately, I don't know of any Norwegian steno dictionaries or steno theories, so you might have to create yours from scratch. Sorry! Let me know if you decide to do it, though. That would be very cool.

Anonymous said...

Do you know of a way to convert a ecplise dictionary (.dix) to .rtf or .json so I can use it in plover?

Mirabai Knight said...

Just export it from Eclipse into .rtf format. If you don't have Eclipse, email it to me and I'll do it for you. (':

Unknown said...

Is this plover@stenoknight.com the right email? Thanks

Unknown said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Unknown said...

hello, Haven´t visited the site in a while,
I have a spanish dictionary, need to convert the rtf to plover format, i tried the dictionary converter but looks like i´´m too noob on programming to do it.
can anyone give me a hand please?

Mirabai Knight said...

Hi! Plover now uses rtf dictionaries natively, so you shouldn't have to convert it at all. (':

Amy said...

I have an old dictionary file from eclipse with the file extension .dix. Is there a way to convert it to an .rtf so that I can open it in Plover? I don't have eclipse anymore so I'm unable to export it into an .rtf from there. Greatly appreciate any help!

Mirabai Knight said...

I don't run Eclipse anymore, but maybe you can find someone on the Eclipse Users Facebook Group and ask them to convert it for you?