Monday, February 24, 2014

Plover Presentation at NYC Accessibility Meetup

If you follow me on Twitter, you already know about this, but I figured I should post it here too: Hesky and I will be presenting on Plover at the NYC Accessibility Meetup today from 7:00 to 9:00 pm at Pivotal Labs, along with DIYAbility. I'll speak for 10 minutes on Plover's potential for various accessibility purposes, from conversational text to speech to captioning for Deaf and hard of hearing people, to the great potential in employing blind and low vision users of screen readers -- who have already honed their speech processing abilities to a very high degree -- as professional stenographers. So if you're in the city and free tonight, feel free to join the Meetup group and drop in tonight!

I'll also be demonstrating Plover with Vim, which I've been using exclusively in my day job for the past month and change (yep, quit the proprietary software cold turkey; nothing but Plover for weeks now, and not a single regret whatsoever! I love it, love it, love it.) There's a whole post in that, though, so I'll save it for later, perhaps with a video and a list of what-all I had to add to my vimrc. Stay tuned!

15 comments:

  1. I'm very interested in seeing what added to your .vimrc to make things work. Is this in Windows or Linux? I'm guessing only Windows? Also, I'd love to see what you use for vim commands in Plover. Thanks!

    ReplyDelete
  2. I'm using Windows, but there's absolutely no reason why it wouldn't work just the same in Linux; that's what cross-platform compatibility is all about, right? (':

    I mainly just use regular vim commands -- b, w, k, j, et cetera. But I do have a few specific ones that I use in Vim:

    Jump to end of file in insert mode --
    "SR-RS": "{#Control_L(End(Escape))A }",

    Save document --
    "STPHA*EUF" : "{#Escape}:w{#Return}{#Control_L(End)A } ",

    Name file --
    "STPAOEUL": ":w C:\\proj\\.txt{#Left}{#Left}{#Left}{#Left}{^^}",

    ReplyDelete
  3. Great information, sounds so easy I think I'll try it! I was under the impression though that the linux version of Plover is not good for VIM because the actual keystrokes are emitted and backspaced over before plover replaces them. Since VIM acts on though keys in command mode bogus commands get executed. I still see it happening on my slowest linux machine in gedit, but haven't tried VIM for a long time. Am I behind the times?

    ReplyDelete
  4. I just watched Stan's video (http://vimeo.com/87543113), and was wondering if there was a video of the entire presentation somewhere? Thanks!

    ReplyDelete
  5. Charles: Ah, yeah. I had forgotten about that. It only happens with a Sidewinder and not a steno machine, so I'd be able to use it in Linux, but you might not. As far as I know, Hesky hasn't fixed that problem yet, though we really should make it a priority. I'll nudge him about it. Thanks for reminding me!

    ReplyDelete
  6. I see that now. I made a DIY steno keyboard out of mechanical keys, keycaps, wire, solder, and an Arduino Mega. I used my understanding of the TX Bolt protocol and it worked! I've been using it exclusively for several days. I see now that when using the serial port you have access to both your normal keyboard and your steno keyboard and no interference. So it's not really a problem for me anymore either. Thanks though!

    ReplyDelete
  7. So glad it's working! Would you mind making a guest post for the Plover blog with pictures and descriptions of your DIY rig? I'm sure other people here would love to see it!

    ReplyDelete
  8. I'd love to. How do I go about that though? Do I need to start my own blog or what? I just need a hint.

    ReplyDelete
  9. If you send me the article (complete with pictures), I'll post it and credit you as the author. Thanks so much! (':

    ReplyDelete
  10. That's very kind of you. One last question (I hope). What format do you prefer? Text (VIM)? Word 2010? LibreOffice? PDF? HTML? Any of those would be possible. Thanks again!

    ReplyDelete
  11. HTML would be great, but whatever's easiest for you! (':

    ReplyDelete
  12. So ... does this mean there's no link to the full presentation?

    ReplyDelete
  13. Here is the link to a public Google+ posting:

    https://plus.google.com/111824802131980292152/posts/JM71UbsXxZa

    Does that work? And if so does it help?

    Charley.

    ReplyDelete
  14. The other 3 links are:

    https://plus.google.com/111824802131980292152/posts/bximBUJyPBW

    https://plus.google.com/111824802131980292152/posts/ERE6SVVyM1c

    https://plus.google.com/111824802131980292152/posts/Aepk1esMcok

    Sorry if this is clumsy, I'm pretty new to this.

    Charley.

    ReplyDelete
  15. Think I found the entire (36 minutes) video:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0RbUPZJKCfw

    ReplyDelete