Many of you may know Ted Morin for his metakey dictionary, his number inversion dictionary, his Plover speed progress diary, his always helpful and patient advice to new users in the Plover Google Group, and of course his fantastic new redesign for the Plover Blog.
You might have noticed that Plover's development has been laying fallow for a while, since Hesky's been too busy at his day job to code new features or review pull requests. He's decided to ease back into the role of Developer Emeritus, and we owe him an impossibly huge debt of thanks for all he's done for Plover over the last many years. But just a few days ago, Ted decided to step up to the challenge. He's currently getting his degree in software engineering at the University of Ottawa, but as he tweeted yesterday:
It's funny when your full-time job as well as your hobby is developing software. Can't wait 'til 5 to finish coding and start coding.
Since taking on the project, he's been plowing through Plover's issues and knocking 'em down with breathtaking precision. We're gearing up for a big new release, and Ted's got all the feature coding, dictionary diffing, and bugthwacking duties well in hand. Ted's also the first lead Plover developer who's also a user. Neither Hesky nor Josh (as generous and amazing and unspeakably brilliant as they both are) have managed to learn any steno yet, but Ted's been using Plover to write code for quite a while now, and has promised a video of the process that I'm absolutely freaking dying to see.
A hundred thousand thanks to Ted! His diligence, perseverance, skill, and enthusiasm are unmatched, and I can't wait to see what kind of shape Plover will take under his leadership.
I said thanks already on the Google group but I want to say again, thank you Ted! I'm eagerly looking toward to testing the next version! It's great to have a Plover user on the job!
ReplyDeleteCharley.
That is so cool. Ted Morin is an extreme, I wonder what to expect from Plover now.
ReplyDeleteTo everyone working/who has worked on Plover, I owe you a huge thanks. You've given me the opportunity to work, practice, and do things three years ago I would have never dreamed possible. I credit Plover with providing me THE crucial tool I needed to increase my income substantially. Plover has allowed me to wake up every morning excited to do something I love. (Offline broadcast captioning) This would have been out of my reach without all the hard work all of you have put into Plover. You, all of you, have changed my life, and because of your hard work, you are helping me change some of my friends' lives. There aren't enough thanks in the world, but thank you so very much. You are my heroes!
ReplyDeleteD'awww! Thanks, Anonymous! That's so sweet of you, and extremely nice to hear. :'D
ReplyDeleteI am really keen to see a video of someone using steno for coding. I'm a java programmer using Eclipse, and am a real beginner to steno, but I can't see how you can code using it.
ReplyDeleteI can't even work out how to use the arrow keys properly. Say using STPH-R for Left, you have to press that over and over, I can't work out a way to hold down an arrow key.
Well, there's this video, which isn't live coding but is me transcribing code from the Plover codebase: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jRFKZGWrmrM
ReplyDeleteBut Ted has recorded a video of himself using Plover to write some actual code, and I'm hoping that video will be up in the near future.
There's no way to hold down a key and have it repeat, but if you use STPH-RB, it'll go left by word, which is much more convenient than going left by letter.
I don't have a video, but I've been using steno to edit Forth code in Vim and work at the command line in Linux for a year or so and I'm very happy with it. In fact Plover quit working for me in Ubuntu and I very much dislike having to go back to qwerty! I hope I can resolve that soon. For the Linux command line I have some briefs such as SHR for ls, TKHR for cd, TKHR-P for cd .., R-PL for rm, KR-P for cp, SKR-P for scp. I also use WR-RB for enter without a following space and cap. I think steno for coding is wonderful!
ReplyDeleteOh, man, Charles, would you consider possibly posting a short screencast on YouTube or similar platform? It would be so great to have as many realtime steno coding examples as possible to show the skeptics that it can be done!
ReplyDelete