Workaround for Plugin Problems

Seems like some people are having problems with the Plover Plugin Manager. The devs are hoping to fix those issues on the next release, but until then, this article might prove helpful:

Manually Installing Plugins

Unofficial Version for Big Sur

If you're on MacOS Big Sur and you're having issues with Plover, try this new unofficial build by Discord user Sammdot. Hopefully it'll do the trick!

Plover and Steno Explained

Check out this amazing video from Aerick! It's so clear and eloquent, with phenomenal graphics, concise explanations of how steno works in just the right amount of detail for a total novice, and it's even captioned! Spread it far and wide!

Public Domain Steno Practice

Nael on the Plover Discord recently dug up a cool resource for text-based practice: Typelit, which allows you to pick a public domain book to type your way through as you read it. Great for drilling, dictionary building, and not being bored out of your skull! I'd recommend A Journal of the Plague Year, which used to be one of my favorites back in high school, but... Perhaps let that one sit on the shelf a while longer. Maybe go for something light and fluffy, like Moby-Dick, instead.

Qwertysteno down, but we're working on it!

Invaluable steno learning resource qwertysteno is down, but I've contacted the developer and am waiting back to hear from him. If the Open Steno community can help in any way (financially or otherwise) to keep Qwertysteno alive, rest assured that we will do what it takes.

Two-Word Phrases

Would you like a spreadsheet of common two-word phrases, arranged by frequency according to Google's n-gram data (so from a written rather than a spoken corpus, which may or may not be what you're looking for, depending on your own particular use case)? Here's a spreadsheet of them!, helpfully compiled by Quetzal from the Plover Discord. I wouldn't necessarily run yourself ragged trying to figure out briefs for every last one of these ("free beast"? "of sewage"? "desserts and"? I think those can all safely be multi-strokers.), and keep in mind that as with any list of search engine terms, there's a fair bit of NSFW words in there, but at least trying to get some short versions of the top fifty or a hundred phrases or so might well be fairly helpful!

Wanna Argue About Steno on Reddit?

Then I've got just the link for you! I'm way too wrung out and overwhelmed these days to dive into a combative forum and rehash all those well-worn debates, but if it's the sort of thing you find enjoyable, have fun!

Be Extremely Internet on Your Steno Machine

A bold new plugin has arrived from Discord user psethwick: Plover Fancytext, which allows you to use Plover to output text in various (mostly joke, mostly unicode) text formats:

bubble: ⓑⓤⓑⓑⓛⓔ
crytyping: I' finne,,, h ddon'nt w,,,orry about me, re,,el yy
fullwidth: ｖａｐｏｒｗａｖｅ
medieval: 𝕸𝖊𝖉𝖎𝖊𝖛𝖆𝖑
sarcasm: wELl ThIs IS cONvEnIeNt
upsidedown: ndsᴉpǝ poʍu
zalgo: z̓ä́l̘g̩̚o͡t́èx͓͠ẗ̬

This is hilarious and I love it. That is all.

Survey for a Proposed New Steno Machine

Fill out this survey from brookieoz on the Discord if you have need of a new independent steno machine that might solve certain problems for you that the current machines can't. There's also a prototype spreadsheet of some preliminary ideas in the #general channel, if you're interested. I always love it when new ideas like this floated, and I'm looking forward to seeing what shakes out of it!

Hacktoberfest 2020!

Hacktoberfest is a month-long celebration of open source, and anyone who makes four or more pull requests to an open source repo hosted on Github will receive a free T-shirt from Digital Ocean.

Some Open Steno Project repos to contribute to:

Plover
Stenodict
Stenojig
Stenomancer
Stenocomplete

If you have your own steno-related open source projects hosted on Github, feel free to add them to this post in the comments.

Happy hacking!

Splitography is Back!

Ecca, one of our original open source steno hardware pioneers, writes:

I am back, splito is back, supplier issues resolved again, steno keebs will be shipping November 29th. Yay!

The Splitography is a beautiful machine, with custom-designed keycaps and a really cool circuitboard-under-glass look. The springs are a bit heavy for my own personal taste, but it's an impeccably designed machine with many fans, and now's your chance to get one again, after a long while being out of stock.

Check it out!!

New Steno-Friendly Multiplayer Typing Site

Typeracer has gotten increasingly hostile to steno users lately, which is a shame, because we've found some good community there in the past, but a new site called Typination has stepped up. It's still somewhat early days, but it's explicitly steno friendly, and its owner has been really responsive to fixing steno-specific bug reports given by users on the Plover Discord, which is much appreciated. If you want a competitive multiplayer typing experience but Typeracer isn't serving your needs anymore, feel free to give it a try! The founder writes:

Hello stenographers.

TypiNation is a multiplayer community typing game where you can compete & improve your typing speed along with other players all around the world.

The game is available both for mobile and computers. Google play store link and Browser Link

If you're a using a stenography keyboard, to enable this option you need to go in settings and make sure this is ticked, you must sign in to get to settings. (Image attached below).

This setting might be removed if you clear "website cookies", etc.. so make sure it's ticked before you start playing if you use steno.

Happy typing!

Gergoplex: A Dual Mode Option

Picture of steno-ready Gergoplex by Cadey on the Plover Discord

I've sung the praises of the Georgi, Germ's dedicated steno rig, but I'm not sure I've mentioned the Gergoplex, another of his offerings, which is intended as a non-chorded qwerty/dvorak/colemak/whatever keyboard, but which can also work with a steno layer if you've got a hankering to switch back and forth between chorded and non-chorded input on the same machine. It's certainly very handsome, and worth a try if you're not ready to go Full Steno just yet!

Typey Type Now Has a Metronome!

Some awesome new Typey Type updates from Di!

Typey Type now has a metronome! You can use a metronome to improve your rhythm for each stroke in finger drills. By drilling difficult transitions between pairs of strokes that slow you down or cause you hesitation using a metronome, you may improve your slowest pairs. Set your BPM (beats per minute) to something a little slower than your typical words per minute, press “Start”, then revise your tricky transitions carefully. Boop boop!

New lessons:

- Queen Elizabeth I’s speech, the Speech to the Troops at Tilbury: https://didoesdigital.com/typey-type/lessons/stories/queen-elizabeth-i/speech-to-the-troops-at-tilbury/

- 21 Proverbs lessons, such as Proverbs starting with S: https://didoesdigital.com/typey-type/lessons/stories/proverbs/proverbs-starting-with-s/

And I've updated the layout

- The amount of settings is getting out of hand, so they now live in a tidy drawer on the right-hand side. The most-used settings are at the top for your convenience, and there's room to grow.

- The lesson layout is more responsive to different screen sizes and shows more words and hints at a time. If you have some phrase that requires 8 strokes, the many steno diagrams will wrap and fit on screen.

- The Lookup page also fits more steno diagrams before adding a vertical scrollbar (whereas the previous horizontal scrollbar was invisible to some people and hard to use).

- The radio button labels are no longer crooked!

- I also made some accessibility improvements about the place.

Thai Steno!

Parnikkapore on the Plover Discord is working on implementing a steno layout for Thai!

More-or-less-full specs for my 1st gen Thai steno layout.

The layout is phonetically arranged (to an extent) and heavily depends on multi-key letters, so it's not very brief friendly. Also: Someone's gonna nickname this the "อีแมว layout" because that phrase means something like "you/that [expletive] cat", but very socially unacceptable (though if you actually stroke อีแมว you'll get เอ็บ, which is not a word). The 5 tones are encoded on the vowel bar, and the 40-or-so vowels are on the U key and the third quarter from the left.

Seriously, how freaking cool is that?! I hope this is the start of a thriving open source Thai steno community!

Typey-Type adds Irreversible Binomials!

There are several new lessons on irreversible binomials on Typey Type!

irreversible binomials with alliteration
Irreversible binomials with opposites and antonyms
Irreversible binomials with related words and synonyms
Irreversible binomials with rhymes and similar-sounding words

Di writes:

I've added new lessons to Typey Type for "irreversible binomials": a group of words used together in fixed order as an expression. They're irreversible because if you flip them, they sound funny! Imagine "fro and to"! "Foe or friend"!

Just another quick photo of another nice semi-DIY steno setup. Dharmalar from the Discord writes:

Not sure if this would be helpful to anyone! I wanted to 3D print key toppers, but don't have a printer. I had Jason Cemra's toppers printed up at superherodiy.com for about $26 shipped. REALLY happy with how they came out, very clean. I had to file the key attachment posts a bit, since this keyboard isn't strictly Cherry MX switches, but that was my mistake. Excited to finally get going on this!

This looks lovely, and I hadn't heard of such a reasonable rate for 3D printed keytoppers, so I'm really glad for this tip!

Art of Chording on Hacker News

This is a bit late, but did y'all see that Art of Chording, the WIP textbook of our illustrious leader Ted, made Hacker News? Pretty good discussion over there! Proud as ever of Ted and his ambassadorship.

Pretty New Hardware

Just some pretty pictures to look at today! First up, Ted's newly hand-soldered Planck Lite with the keytoppers off for maximal rainbow effect:

Next, Bill's Cougar Attack-X3 RGB with 3D printed steno keytoppers:

And finally, a cool but complex low profile system from crides:

Not sure what exactly is going on here, but I like it!

Cool Capacitative Prototype

Check out this image gallery for a new capacitative Plover board that evils is currently cooking up! I think this is such a cool idea, and I really hope it comes to fruition soon!

How Steno Works

How Steno Works, a new essay for people who are curious about the nuts and bolts of steno, is now live on Art of Chording! It's a fantastic introductory resource for people who have no frame of reference for stenographic technology. If you've ever tried to explain steno to someone and given up in frustration, this is the resource for you! It's even got an interactive animation showing steno chords in action. Great stuff from the amazing Ted, as always.

Who Mods the TinyMod?

Gabi May from the Plover Discord is who! Just a short one today, showing off a picture of a gorgeously modded TinyMod with new springs and amazing flat lavender G20 keytoppers. Gabi May writes:

I like them a lot! The flat keys do make chording appreciably easier. But the big difference has been swapping out the springs and lubing the switches. It's just lovely to write with. I used 20g springs. Mine were from mykeyboard.eu.

This is such a LOOK. I love it!!

Capacitive Steno Keyboard WIP

Check out this developing design for a DIY capacitive steno keyboard with Plover onboard. Some interesting ideas here! I'll be very interested to see how it turns out.

Typeracer Has a Steno Universe

This is a somewhat controversial development (that hasn't come without its costs to the steno community), and you can get minutes of the full debate by searching for "typeracer" in the Plover Discord, but I thought it would be worthwhile, at least, for people to know about Typeracer's steno universe. If that sort of thing appeals, give it a try. And if you want to use steno to play in the main Typeracer universe, heh... Well, watch out.

More Typey Type Updates!

Check out this Twitter thread on new updates to Typey Type! Highlights include:

• Progress page with ten most recent lessons
  
• New Javascript lessons
  
• Contributions to the Learn Plover table of prefix and suffix strokes

And more!

Video of Plover-assisted Art Installation: Assembly

Wow, remember when I blogged about Assembly, an art project featuring MIDI steno at the 2019 Venice Biennale? Our amazing Italian stenographer friend Sillabix posted actual footage of it in the Plover Discord recently! He says:

I had to study the more palatable chords to steno the poem "In another tongue" of the Australian poet David Malouf. Then they took the Midi datas outputted from the Michela and created a musical score for several instruments. Was a bit difficult because steno chords sound really close to dodecaphonic music. The coolest thing was the great versatility of Plover: without it this project wouldn't have been possible. Eclipse translation was too slow and out of sync with the midi notes recorded by the notation software. Several aspects involved and several twists to let steno and music meet together so that the notes played by all the instruments and the chorists could be an arrangement from the original steno chords.

So freaking cool!!

Read Punz's Steno Diary!

From the Discord, there's a new Steno Diary to enjoy, by new Plover learner Punz. I love this genre of journal. It's always really fun to witness the trajectory of progress, the frustrations, the pushing past the plateaus... Can't wait to read more!

He Completed Typey Type!

Check out this fantastic blog post by someone who got 100% progress on Typey Type! It's a great read, and made me so dang happy.

And so, after five months of practice, I finally reached 100% completion, meaning I have been able to type 10,000 words without mis-strokes. I was initially worried that I was not hitting goals fast enough since I read of people who were, say, getting up to 50 words-per-minute (WPM) after just a month or two of steno practice. Maybe they had the luxury to dedicate their entire full-time schedule to stenography, or maybe they were super-geniuses, or maybe a bit of both…. Regardless, I needed to consciously ignore all this, not compare myself to anyone else (real or imagined), and just keep up the routine. It may have taken a while, but I do not mind; the journey has been beneficial and being able to hit a goal feels great!

New Typey-Type Lessons: Proverbial Phrases!

Check out these fantastic exercises on Typey-Type using commonly known proverbs to drill your steno skills!

Unrelatedly, in the shower today I thought of the sentence "PAUL STRAPD TRUFLD WAFLS TO TWO TRUBLD RED RATS", which is not what you'd call a common proverb yet, but just give it time. I might use it in a future talk on steno for beginners, anyway. It made me giggle.

Tips on Quieting Your Georgi

When I was using my Georgi full time in classrooms last fall, I would occasionally get dirty looks at the loud clicking sound it made. I was a little hesitant to try to make it quieter, because I had added silencer clips to one of my TinyMods a while before then and had inadvertently screwed up the key recognition, so I just stared right back at all the dirty lookers, but if you're feeling awkward, you might want to try Germ's o-ring solution:

“I swear by Tape Mod + GPL103 + O-rings. The O-Rings soften the bottom out, tape softens the upstroke. Tape Mod is loops of tape around the upper housing where the stem makes contact with on return. Gets rid of the loud 'thock' on the way up. GPL103 helps dampen any remaining sound. Just try and find some thin packing tape. You'll cut it into thin strips and loop in around the two points between the tabs. Cut off the excess once you're done. Just try and find some thin packing tape. You'll cut it into thin strips and loop in around the two points between the tabs. Cut off the excess once you're done Tbh any old light oil should work. If you have a sewing machine kicking around go raid it.

Feel free to comment if you have alternative suggestions or what you think if you choose to give this technique a try!

New Open Hardware NKRO Laptop

Check out the MNT Reform, a new open hardware Linux laptop with n-key rollover currently being funded on Crowd Supply.

Instead of following the trend of making ever thinner and smaller devices and sacrificing the typing experience, we decided to put a mechanical keyboard into Reform. Our open-hardware keyboard uses Kailh Choc Brown switches with 3 mm travel and 50 g operating force with n-key rollover and fully customizable firmware

This is quite heavy for steno, but you might be able to swap out the 50g springs for lighter ones. I can't use it myself, since I need a Windows-only app called Streamtext Connect for a lot of my work (booo), but otherwise it seems like a pretty cool machine! Support the crowdfunding campaign now, and get yourself a nice new steno deck!

Kids and Steno

Someone recently posted this video on the Plover Discord. I'd seen it before, but I watched it again, because the subject's been on my mind lately. My own kid has really been getting into writing lately, both with markers and crayons and on my computer. Just about every day he asks me if he can "play Vim", and his favorite thing to do is to make little guys going \o/ and /o\, and also mashing random alt codes to see what special characters he can dredge up. But yesterday he asked me how to write "catlike tread" and "Rude Buster". (Two of his favorite songs these days, from The Pirates of Penzance and the Deltarune Soundtrack, respectively) He already knew how to spell "cat". I walked him through figuring out "like", told him that "tread" had an A in it for no discernible reason, and helped him sound out "Rude Buster", which he typed letter by letter as he matched the sounds to the word.

Then I asked him if he would like me to write them in steno, and he said yes! So I wrote the outlines, broke them up into pieces, and told him what each chord sounded like. He grasped the concept pretty quickly, which thrilled me to my toes. The moment was fleeting, and he soon moved on to banging out random special characters again, but I'm excited about moving forward with him, bit by bit. Lately he's seemed frustrated whenever he's gotten to play on my steno machine, preferring the simple transparency of the qwerty keyboard to the mysterious seemingly random output he gets from hitting steno keys, but I'm hopeful that I'll be able to bring him into the steno fold sooner rather than later.

Has anyone ever taught their kid how to read or write steno? I was thinking about breaking out one of my old manual machines from storage and using it to write secret messages to him on paper steno rolls, if I can locate any in these strange times. What do you think?

The Satisfaction of a Practice Graph

Check out this beautiful post on r/Plover by user gmat800live. I remember when I was in steno school I plotted all my thrice weekly speed tests obsessively, which helped me tremendously to see my progress over the long haul and to keep from getting frustrated when I was stuck in a plateau. If you're worried that you're not progressing, graph your practice sessions! It can be fantastically motivating.

Spectra Lexer: Still Freaking Cool

I've blogged about this before, but people on the Discord have been newly enthusing about Spectra Lexer, and I believe it's gotten some new documentation since the last time I posted about it, so I thought it might be worth posting again as a reminder. Lead Dev Ted said recently "Spectra Lexer is probably the most amazing Plover plugin. Really solid software and an amazing tool that I don't think exists quite anywhere else." If you haven't availed yourself of this resource, give it a try!

Plover Dictionary Transformer

A new tool for making batch changes in the Plover dictionary, posted on the Discord: Plover Dictionary Transformer. I remember doing this by hand like 14 years ago, when I swapped all the entries containing the word "a" in the StenEd dictionary to define it as AEU rather than A, and all the entries using the "a" prefix to use A instead of AEU. Save yourself some time and effort wrangling similar transformations via regular expressions and give it a try!

New Steno Cheat Sheet

Check out this beautiful new Steno Keyboard Cheat Sheet by Graf on the Plover Discord! I love the whole aesthetic.

A New Step Forward for Plover in the Middle!

Go to the Discord and check out this series of pictures and descriptions of Charley's latest attempt to turn a Raspberry Pi and a TinyMod into a self-contained PloverBox!! Great stuff. Apparently there's still a bit more to be worked out, but I'll be first in line once he comes out with a finished model. Can't wait!

Video Hangout Time

Josh on the Discord says:

OK, I'm just going to go ahead and do something simple. Sunday, April 5th, 8-9PM UTC, I'll fire up a Google Hangout and post the link here. Those are limited to 10 people, but even 10 is a bit awkward for a group video chat anyway, so if we get more people, someone else can click the "start new video call" button and post another hangout link here, and we'll encourage people to mix it up. In other time zones, that's 1PM Pacific, 4PM Eastern, 9PM UK ("British Summer Time"), 10PM CEST.

I'm not sure if I'll be able to make it due to the unpredictability of 3-year-olds, but it sounds really fun! If you're wanting some steno-related video geekery, hop on and say hi this Sunday!

Steno Community Virtual Meetup?

If you're potentially interested in such a thing, join the Discord. They might be making one happen at some point!

Join the Plover Discord!

Stuff is rough right now, as I don't need to tell anyone. So if you're looking for a kind and friendly community, please consider joining The Plover Discord. They talk about all sorts of stuff on there, but it's always with a mind to make people feel welcome and included, no matter their experience or interests. Please join us! I promise it helps a lot to find kindred spirits from all over the world to talk about cool nerdy stuff with. We'd love to have you.

GergoPlex Heavy: A Beautiful Chonk of a Hybrid Split Keyboard

The new GergoPlex Heavy from the man who brought us the Georgi can be used with steno (using NKRO) or qwerty or any other layout, since it runs QMK firmware. It's not as affordable as a stock Georgi, but it sure is beautiful, and I bet it's a fantastic feeling to heft it in your hand.

Germ says:

We're living up to our name with the GergoPlex: Heavy, a industrial styled ergo made from lasered steel. No flex, this is a heavy and rigid case that will make a great addition to any desk or shop. It's not perfect either, there's slight texturing to the surface, exposed remnants of the cutting process. But that's half the charm, topped off with acorn nuts and clocking in at 800grams this is one weighty solid ergo.

Check out the Gergoplex Heavy on Germ's site if you're interested in getting one for yourself!

Corrected Survey Responses Link

Hey, somehow I managed to accidentally link to the results of last year's survey instead of the one for this year in the preliminary results post! I've fixed the link in the original post, but here are the actual most recent results (good catch, Ty!), with all my apologies. Also it looks like we're only around half the number of responses that we got last year, so I'd love to see more people take the survey. It's still open! Sorry for the mixup.

Steno Proverbs

On the Discord recently, Jladd (who has been compiling some fantastic steno Anki decks lately) proposed some proverbs, inspired by Go Proverbs and Programming Pearls.
Here was his list:

• Treat steno as a hobby (try not to pin expectations on steno becoming a certain thing by a certain time)
• Regardless of which theory you pick, you'll likely need to put in a fair amount of practice to become proficient
• Don't go it alone! Plover has a rich community of creative tinkers, makers, and hobbyists (along with pros!) that can offer encouragement, guidance along the way.
• Steno generally takes ~3 mo. to become comfortable with basics, 3-6 months to start gaining speed and ~2 years to really get comfortable. But it definitely varies from person to person.
• Don't forget fingerspelling! Fingerspelling is your fallback, so be sure to practice this as well!
• Dictionaries are flexible; tailor them to fit the way your brain works. Everyone has their own spin on steno theory.
• When optimizing speed, it can be helpful to think about your average number of strokes per word.

Then Sooty (a self-taught stenographer who has been working professionally for quite some time now) chipped in with these:

• Always add to your dictionary, at every opportunity
• Brief on frequency, not difficulty
• There's no point moving quickly if you don't move correctly
• Practice with a metronome
• Walk, don't sprint.
• Find patterns in your dictionary, make new patterns
• There is no such thing as "verbatim"

What do you think? Do these ring true to you? I really like this idea and would love to hear more from other people! Please feel free to submit them in the comments or on the Discord or Google Group.

Georgi Songvid and Preliminary Survey Results

Check out Jladd demonstrating some cool steno skills on his Georgi (and beautiful custom tripod mount) along to a soothing Cat Power song!

ETA: Link fixed! Also, the initial results of the Open Steno Project Community Survey are live, but it's still open, so if you want to contribute your own response, please feel free!

Homebrew Firmware for StenoMod

Hey, if you've ever wanted multichord repeat for your StenoMod, check out Paper Steno, Josh's custom firmware, now up on GitHub. I haven't used it myself, but I know several people who find it helpful (especially when using the steno machine to send arrow keystrokes and other often repeated actions), so if you think it'd come in handy, flash it to your StenoMod and give it a try!

Steno Zine!

A lot of it is about the technical details of how to get started with open-source steno, but I also get a bit into the history and culture around it, which is pretty interesting if you're into that kind of thing.

Ewen, a member of the Plover Discord, has made a lovely little 24-page zine, available for $2.50 (or anything above that if you'd like to kick in some additional cash) on Itch and Etsy. I find the whole phenomenon of zines incredibly charming, and I'm so tickled that there's now one on the subject of hobbyist stenography!

Beautiful Custom Tented Georgi Stand

Check out this amazing handmade tented Georgi stand from jladd! What an incredible piece of work!

2020 OSP Community Survey is Live!

Please take the survey here. Many many thanks to Ty for getting this all together, and to community members for adding their questions. I can't wait to see what we come up with!

Input Wanted for 2020 OSP Community Survey

I massively dropped the ball on the annual Community Survey in 2019 due to toddler parent brain and a host of other boring non-excuses, but the excellent Ty is helping me revive it for this year and is soliciting new questions on the Plover Discord. It'll probably be going live in the relatively near future, so if you've got a burning question you really want to see on there, now's your chance to submit it!

Jumping Into Steno

I just wanted to link to two really nice blog posts by OSP community member Jladd: Jumping Into Steno Part One and Part Two. I always love personal accounts of how people discover steno and what they're finding as they explore the system, and I really like the way Jladd puts things:

I got back to my hotel room with the nagging feeling that there must be a better way of capturing information in real-time. Away I went to the trusty internet to find the answer I knew had to be out there.

This is exactly how I found out about steno too! I was doing freelance transcription and I knew there had to be a better way. A quick trip to Wikipedia's article on stenotype, and the rest was history.

I had seen this before; I remembered watching Matlock, the detective, on television, presenting his case in the courtroom, and seeing the court reporter sitting up by the judge, quietly doing the impossible…capturing every single word in real-time. I remember puzzling about this when I was young and earnestly concluding that it must be impossible. (After all, they were hardly typing, and the machine they were using seemed to be missing an awful lot of keys.)

I was lucky enough to get to meet Jladd at PyCon 2019, as he notes in the second post, and I'm so happy that those few minutes of us chatting together have led him to give steno a try; he's been a valued contributor to the Plover Discord for just a few months shy of a year now, and we're very lucky to have him. I hope he continues this series! If you'd like to write down your own narrative of how you found out about steno or Plover and how you're finding the experience of learning it, please let me know! I'd like to link to as many of them as possible.

Typey Type Is Now Open Source!!!

How amazing is this?! Di, the inventor of the invaluable steno learning resource Typey Type for Stenographers, has released her source on Github! I already admired the everloving heck out of her, but now I admire her even more. Three cheers for her commitment to fantastic design, excellent pedagogy, and truly open source steno learning tools!