Monday, July 22, 2013

Plover 2.5.1 released!

Hesky continues to set the world on fire, with yet another pivotal release of Plover! These notes are for the 2.5.0 release, because the 2.5.1 release is just a bugfix.

New Features:

- Suffix folding: when a suffix stroke (-G, -D, -S, -Z) is used and the outline is not in the dictionary then the outline is looked up without the suffix and then the suffix is added. For example, if TURPB was turn and -G is {^ing} and TURPBG is not in the dictionary then if you stroke TURPBG Plover will output turning.

- Support for multiple dictionaries with the lowest dictionary having priority. i.e. if a stroke is defined in the last dictionary then it overrides the entry in the previous dictionary.

- Arpeggiated stroke input for non-NKRO keyboards can be turned on in config. With this option on you can type strokes one key at a time and they will be sent when space is pressed.

- Save position (and size where applicable) for Plover windows. This means that most windows will be in the place you left it.

- Stroke display window with two styles (paper and raw) can be opened from options and can be made to open on startup. Can optionally be always on top.

- Better support for punctuation in caseCATalyst dictionaries. Users reported that in dictionaries from casecat there are spaces before punctuation. That should now be fixed.

- Backspace keystrokes when using keyboard to activate plover (resume, toggle and quit commands). Up until now using the keyboard to turn on Plover would leave behind typed characters. That should now be fixed.

- Fixed saving of stop bits in serial config dialog. There were problems with saving stop bits. That should now be fixed.

- Support Passport machine protocol. This is confirmed to work with Passport machines.

Download the new release here!

Windows
Linux
Mac

I'm particularly thrilled about the suffix folding and multiple dictionary features. So exciting!!

14 comments:

Amber said...

Horray! Any news on when the installable Windows version will be released? I'm still having trouble running the .exe version in Windows. :(

Mirabai Knight said...

What kind of trouble are you having, Amber? When you run

https://github.com/plover/plover/releases/download/v2.5.1/plover.exe

what happens? It should work, so if it isn't, we need to fix it.

Unknown said...

Not sure if anyone else has been having trouble, but I have a lot of lock-ups when trying to add dictionary entries on-the-fly. I've only got one dictionary--the default plover dict that I've modified by hand with a few custom entries--and it's 98% the original plover version.

Anyway I've used 2.4.1 and 2.5.1, both give me a lot of grief when adding entries. For example, just now I started typing (in qwerty) THARBG to add an entry for "that is correct" and it immediately stopped responding after I typed TH. I waited a minute before giving up and end-tasking the program. Restarted and tried another entry, stopped responding again.

I've been able to add an entry once or twice, but otherwise the feature has been largely unusable for me. :(

Mirabai Knight said...

Oh, dear. I'm so sorry, Breanne. I haven't encountered that at all. Can you post a detailed bug report, naming which machine and OS you use and the settings you're using, on the google group?

http://groups.google.com/group/ploversteno

Also, can you try, just as a test, using Plover 2.5.1 with just the default dictionary, and see if you have the same problem with adding entries then as well? That way we might be able to narrow down whether it's something weird going on in your dictionary versus the program itself. Thanks, and sorry again!

Anonymous said...

Will there be choices in the future for downloading alternative (theory specific) dictionaries, for example a "StenEd" dictionary?

Felipe Siciliano said...

Hello! I´m from Brazil, and I want to congratulate you for this great idea of creating an open source estno program. I have a doubt. For Brazil, the steno table is diferent and allthough I´ve imported my dictionary to Plover, it doesn´t traduces to portuguese because when I type the letter k in the portuguese steno machine, for example, plover understand I´m tiping the t. Is it possible to change the english keys for the portuguese one?
Thanks and congratulation once again.
felipesiciliano@gmail.com

gdwarner said...

Just to be sure, when you add a new item to your dictionary and have more than one dictionary, does the new translation go into the bottom-most dictionary? There's no way to tell for sure via the interface itself.

Soo Doe Nimh said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Soo Doe Nimh said...

Thanks!

Not to sound ungrateful, but when is the fix for right-hand-side numbers coming? Or was that fixed long ago?

The suffix folding is a major event. I'm away from my Plover installation, but I'll be testing the -G (does -DZ work too?), -L (-ly), -D, and -S (and -Z) when I get home.

If even half of these work, that's a major feature!

Mirabai Knight said...

The numbers bug has been fixed for ages. Sorry, should have mentioned that, but it was several versions back!

Tricia Bagley said...

I, too, am having a heck of a time running the exe in Windows. Here is my post from a previous link: Any help is more than appreciated!

Boy, do I want to get this working. I downloaded the exe file for Windows and was able to open it twice (pretty excited to write with my sidewinder!) before receiving a series of "unexpected errors". I've since redownloaded multiple times with the same error messages ending with "attribute error: 'frame' object has no attribute. Does anyone have a workaround for this in Windows 8? Any guidance is appreciated. T
July 28, 2013 at 5:13 PM

I downloaded the exe link above, to make sure I didn't miss the latest version. I'm receiving an error message that I do not have a valid json file. I did not change the file that came with the exe. When I added my dix file to the exe, receive the same error message. Thoughts? Thank you! T.

Mirabai Knight said...

Hi! Are you still having this problem with version 2.5.3? If so, can you post to the google group about it? http://groups.google.com/group/ploversteno

Mirabai Knight said...

I'm afraid we don't have access to other theory dictionaries, but if users are able to procure them for us, we'll happily host them. I believe that it's not legally possible to copyright a database (i.e. a dictionary), but for courtesy's sake, we don't want to host anything that the creators don't want in the public domain.

Soo Doe Nimh said...

The numbers bug is fixed!

Hahahahahaha! It's all part of the plan!

The last obstacle to world domination has been removed - forward with my fiendish plans!

Seriously - thanks for that one.