Tons of Javelin Improvements!

Javelin, the Embedded Steno Engine, has gotten a ton of upgrades recently. From Jeffrey, its creator:

Over the last couple of weeks, Javelin has seen a number of improvements. Initial support for Asterisk has been added. A couple of long standing issues resolved, and a more robust translation windowing mechanism (how many strokes to consider when converting to text) has been implemented, with a side effect of dramatically improving performance, which also improves battery life on the Jarne.

Over a slightly longer timeframe (few months), there have been other improvements. Here are just a few:

• Improved Linux/Android compatibility

• Added =retro_transform command -- this is particularly useful if you want to share strokes or definitions in your dictionary.

Documentation here

• Added TX Bolt and ProCAT output support

• Added dynamic TRS/bluetooth hotplug support for Jarne Variant B

• Added Yubikey support to Jarne

• Improved support for media keys

If you haven't rebuilt a full firmware in a while, now may be a good time; and keep the feedback/bug reports coming!

Paul's Q&A Plugin

Somehow I missed this when Paul posted it back in October! Paul made a Plover plugin for legal testimony to follow up his 2021 post on the subject, and the above is a video demonstrating it in action. I'm happy to say the only time I've had to do this sort of writing is when I've taken the NCRA certification tests (I've got a CRC and an RDR); since I'm temperamentally averse to the legal side of steno, I've never actually done this sort of thing in a real deposition or courtroom. But it's cool to know that Plover is up to the challenge!

Typey Type Now Works Better With Screenreaders!

The wonderful Di of DiDoesDigital has improved accessibility on Typey Type, fixing some incompatibilities with screen readers and making a few other bug fixes as well. All extremely good and important stuff!

Programming With Steno at EmacsConf!

Check out this awesome video on programming in steno from Discord member Sequential Design at EmacsConf 2023!!

TinyMod Split!!

The ever-amazing Charley has made a new version of the TinyMod, which I've been carrying around as a backup machine in my steno bag for years now. It's the TinyMod Split!!

I just got this free review unit from Charley in the mail, so I haven't gotten a chance to put it through its paces yet, but I'm very excited about it. Ever since my late lamented Georgi gave up the ghost, I've really been hankering for a split-style hobbyist steno board that will allow me to tent my hands the way I do with my ridiculously expensive professional Infinity Ergonomic machine. Charley's machines tend to be rock solid reliable and have a really great feel to them, so I'm looking forward to giving it a try. Full review forthcoming!

Stenophonatic on the Go

I'm taking my 7-year-old on a plane for the first time to visit my home town in Montana, so it's a short post today, but I brought a pack of Stenophonatic cards with me, a generous gift from its inventor, so if we get some downtime during the trip to play it together, I'll be sure to report back on how it goes!

Typey Type Updates!

I always enjoy a Typey Type update!

• New Typey Type Voice settings
• When your accuracy is below 90%, Typey Type now tells you to repeat the lesson
• New exponent numbers dictionary to write E=mc²
• Emily's symbols lesson on Typey Type with new punctuation descriptions
• Typey Type now lets you save study type preset settings

Plover at the Bloop Museum!

Read this delightful and heartwarming story about the Plover community helping to decipher and archive an old stenographic floppy disk from 1993! The Bloop Museum is a very cool project set up for the purpose of recovering and archiving both data and hardware. The upshot of the collaboration between Bloop and Plover?

Combined with all the other evidence gathered, this document was handed back to the court system, and Maryland has now exonerated not one but two individuals from wrongful accusation.

Pretty amazing. Well done, Bloop Museum, and well done, Plover community!

Steno Doom Typist

Our dear friend Paul is at it again! Doom... But typing. Typing... But steno. Paul wipes the floor with inferior input methods and cleans up handily by using steno to tip-tap-type his way through monstrous mazes. Viewer discretion... Is advised.

Plover2CAT Captioning Options!!

Wow! An update today that I personally find extremely exciting. Not only does the Plover2CAT plugin have a customizable window to display caption output, but it can also interface with Teams, Zoom, and OBS -- even captioning to Twitch streams! check out step by step instructions with screenshots to set it up. Amazing work by Mythogenesis, Ashen, and Plants!!

Exponent Numbers Dictionary

The inimitable, irrepressible, and irreplaceable Di has just uploaded a new exponent numbers dictionary to her GitHub. Useful whether you're using steno for scientific purposes, captioning math class, or just want to be able to cover the arithmetical gamut!

Autoreconnect

This might be a little niche, but I'll ask you to indulge me, because it's kind of a slow news week in the Open Steno world. Today the autoreconnect plugin was merged into master:

add plover-auto-reconnect-machine

This might not matter to a lot of you, but as someone with a finicky pro machine (a used Infinity Ergonomic with a somewhat wonky battery), when my machine is jostled, it sometimes resets, and having to reconnect manually whenever this happens is a royal pain. I'm really looking forward to getting this plugin on board to make the process less arduous! Thanks, Tschulte!

Taking a Mulligan on Thumbs Up Machines

A very long time ago I received the boards pictured above from SashaK of ThumbsUp for free, with the promise that I would give them a review on this blog. Unfortunately, try as I might, I was never able to get them to work for my hands and fingers. Something about the tiered layers just always felt wrong to me, and for whatever reason I wasn't able to move past that. I felt like I wasn't able to give them a fair review, so I kept putting it off, but it's been so long now that it's just been too long. If anyone who lives in NYC and reads this blog would like me to donate the boards to them, I'd be very happy to do so! They're not for me, but maybe they would work for you. Message me on Discord if you want to meet me somewhere in Manhattan and take them. SashaK has said:

I am preparing a couple of new versions and trying to incorporate users’ wishes into them. For example, the MX version will be compatible with Gateron Low Profile switches instead of ALPS.

So if that sounds appealing, or you have any other requests you'd like to make of Sasha, get in touch with him on the Discord or go to ThumbsUp to order the new version of the boards!

New Builds!

The amazing Sammi has been working tremendously hard on the Plover codebase recently! Lots of continuous builds of Plover 4 pre-release candidates coming out lately. And I feel like that means we might have even bigger and more exciting news soon, but in the mean time, it's still pretty great!! All thanks and credit to Sammi for being such a great shepherd of the project!

Community Anki Decks

If you like learning and reviewing steno using digital flashcards, this repository of Plover-themed Anki decks might come in handy. So far there are four decks: Learn Plover, Emily Symbols, Emily Modifiers, and Top N Words. According to Will, who built the repository:

The generated decks use the Steno-Font to display the steno layout for outlines. The font is embedded in the generated decks and does not need to be installed separately. This is done so the deck can be synced to the web or mobile apps and still display correctly.

Typey Type Lesson Builder

Check out this wonderful blog post by Di about her process to rebuild the lesson generator on her amazing and invaluable steno learning app to make her development of new Typey Type lessons vastly more efficient. Even for non-developers, there are some enlightening and useful ideas in there! As Di says...

What had previously been hours of headaches and wrangling was done in moments on a whim. Seriously, I cannot overstate the satisfaction I felt in that moment.

The entire steno community has been benefiting from Di's incredible work for years now, and I'm so grateful that she's continued to improve and perfect it. Three cheers for the magnificent Di!

The Starboard!

I just learned about The Starboard today, when I saw on the Plover Discord news channel that it now supports Javelin firmware. Wow! What a beautiful little hobbyist machine at a fantastic price! I might need to add one of these to my already ridiculous collection of tiny footprint steno machines. I don't really have the space, but it's just so dang cute! So happy to see all the new machines in the hobbyist steno space.

Paul's Steno GitHub Profile GIF

Paul has a cool GIF taken from one of his excellent steno coding videos on his GitHub profile, and he thought other people might like to do the same, so he offered some advice for making one:

When thinking about what I wanted to put on my GitHub profile README, I was just about to copy what I'd seen others do and write some "About Me" text, but then realised it could be way cooler to show off what writing with steno is like in a way that might resonate with developers.

GitHub doesn't allow embedded videos in the READMEs, so I had to resort to a classic looping animated GIF. After recording a video with OBS, I used the `ffmpeg` (https://ffmpeg.org/) and `gifsicle` (https://github.com/kohler/gifsicle) command-line tools to create a GIF that was not so big that it took ages to load, but also didn't sacrifice too much on image quality.

The command invocations are not easy to intuit, but in case someone wants to experiment with their own steno video LM and tweak the parameters, here is what got me my result:

`ffmpeg -i steno.mov -pix_fmt rgb8 -r 10 output.gif && gifsicle -O3 output.gif -o output.gif`

Abby's Left Hand Modifiers

There's a new left hand modifier dictionary that, according to Abby, its creator:

is inspired by and can essentially be seen as a combination of Emily's Modifiers and Achim Siebert's Left Hand Modifier Keys. Essentially, it allows every shortcut to be typed in two strokes and using only the left hand. As such, only the following keys are used:

Looks promising! If you're in the market for that sort of thing, you should definitely check it out!

Plover2CAT Updates!

Plover2CAT development seems to be proceeding extremely well! Some new features:

- SRT captioning files are now word wrapped to 42 chars max and each line gets accurate start/end times

- word-wrapped captions in separate window while writing into the editor, with customizable character buffer for undos and minimum display time for each line

- (untested) send captions to MS Teams and Zoom sessions if you have the api link/token

- keyboard editing: type freely in the transcript with a normal keyboard whenever plover output is disabled, not necessary to use the insert text dialog

Great work! I think I might wind up testing that Zoom and Teams API integration in my captioning work. Might wind up coming in pretty handy under certain circumstances.

Type Type's New Lessons and KPOES Game

Typey Type has some great new stuff, including fingerspelling pangrams, a Greek alphabet lesson, and a new game for daily writing called KPOES!

Steno Coding: Elm Examples

Paul's done it again! Another great unedited steno coding video!

Steno Showcase: Ashen

Did you know that there are super cool hardware and software showcase channels on the Plover Discord, where people can show off their steno setups? They're really fun to browse through. Today I want to show off Ashen's setup, with permission, of course. Details and build instructions for both the hardware and the software are on the Discord!

Ashen says:

I managed to coerce VS Code into treating my steno stuff as a workspace that automatically opens up my paper tape and suggestions window in a split terminal. Not quite a full CAT display but having everything in one place (instead of opening a terminal taking up my entire right third of the desktop) is pretty nice.

Josiah Theory

An augmented steno layout adding ^ to * to use as a stroke modifier, some Magnum-style briefing principles, a Plover-like core, and a dictionary of around 30,000 words and phrases, many of them one-strokers: This is Josiah Theory, a new write-short method. From the GitHub:

Josiah, a random stenographer/coder, had an insatiable appetite for briefs and methods of shortening writing within the plover Discord.

Concerned members of the community began questioning Josiah's sanity, and in 23/11/2022, Kaoffie unveiled the hidden meaning behind Josiah's name, "Josiah" stands for "Just one stroke it all hahahahaha"

To celebrate the 30,000 user.json entries added to Josiah's dictionary after 2 years of steno, Josiah_theory emerged, with the aspiration of becoming a living meme.

Josiah_theory attempts to combine the best parts of every theory as well as random ideas from the plover discord to make writing as short as possible especially for common phrases and words.

With this being said, some writing out ideas are shown and is highly recommended at times to avoid hesitation.

A book is currently being written by Prof to accompany this theory (not publicly available yet).

New Version of Plover2CAT

Discord user plants says:

Plover2CAT, the plugin attempting to make Plover a CAT, is now ver 2.0.0. Biggest new features are you can insert images, change the background color, and do multi-stroke search. The major changes are invisible, relating to how data is represented (see docs) but previous saved JSON transcripts will import (and get saved in the new format).

Head to https://github.com/greenwyrt/plover2CAT to update!

Coding React TicTacToe with Steno!

Another steno coding video by the amazing Paul!!

Portuguese Layout Video

Sadly I don't speak Portuguese, but if you do, check out this video on the Portuguese steno layout for Plover!

PracticePlover.com Has Been Updated!

PracticePlover.com just received a pretty big update, featuring more sections on prefixes/affixes and practice sentences!

A Halkomelem Steno Theory!

Halkomelem is a Salishan language spoken in the Northwest of Canada, and Someone, a linguist, coder, and stenographer, is developing a stenographic theory to write it! How extremely cool!!!

MakingFix Learns a Weird Keyboard (Spoiler: It's Steno)

A deep dive video, over two hours long, introducing the principles of steno via Plover and the EcoSteno! I confess I haven't actually watched this entire video, but from what I have watched, it seems to be a pretty compelling demonstration of steno in action. Pretty fun to follow along with, if you're fairly new to learning steno and need a bit of motivation and/or guidance.

Korean Steno!!

Two Peter videos in a row, because this one is just so cool!!!

Numbers and Symbols Demonstration Video

As Peter of StenoKeyboards says (and demonstrates) in this video, you can write anything with steno! Anything!!

More Ruby Steno Coding: Paul Solves the Bob Problem

Paul says:

This is my attempt at solving the "Bob" problem from Exercism's Ruby track in a test-driven (red-green-refactor) way using Plover stenography.

Steno Pedagogy!

I'm not quite sure how or why, but my 6-year-old's interest in learning steno has recently been reignited! Kind of flying by the seat of my pants in terms of best practices for steno pedagogy, so any advice would be very welcome. So far he's been asking me how to write particular words and I've been writing the steno down for him, plus I gave him a list of easy sentences to write on the be-Javelined Uni that connects to his Chromebook, and he's managed to write pretty much all of them perfectly! It's very exciting.

Can You Write Short Using Plover Theory?

A bit of a digression this week, if you'll indulge me. Recently on the Discord someone asked if Plover Theory was good enough for professional use. Well, I use it, I replied. And I'm a professional. Some people worried that it might not be a "short enough" theory. I answered that most people tend to "write out" more when they start steno and then find that their writing gradually becomes shorter and more efficient over time, as they make their own briefs for common words used in their own particular field of work. By way of demonstration, I offered a paragraph that I'm able to write using my current personal dictionary (which is several years newer than the dictionary distributed with Plover) in at most one stroke per word:

And between heterochromatin, heterochromatin can spread on DNA. We talked a little bit about that, I think. How H3K9 methylation can modify neighboring histones, neighboring nucleosomes, and allow with the help of HP1 protein to spread heterochromatin. There's something called a barrier sequence, which is in fact related to an insulator, that will block the spread of heterochromatin. That leaves euchromatin, the actively transcribed regions. A key factor that works in these kinds of elements, insulators and barriers, is an 11 zinc finger repressor protein. You know we've talked about zinc fingers, proteins that contain multiple zinc fingers.

I caption a lot of biology material -- biochemistry, molecular biology, computational and microbial genomics, etc -- and have made briefs that allow me to do it quickly and efficiently. My strokes for the paragraph above are as follows:

SKP: and TWAOEPB: between HO*ERPBT: heterochromatin KW-BG: {,} HO*ERPBT: heterochromatin K: can SPRED: spread OPB: on TK*PB: DNA TP-PL: {.} WAOE: we TAUBGD: talked PWHR-BLT: a little bit PW: about THA: that KW-BG: {,} EU: I THEU: think TP-PL: {.} HOU: how HAOEFPB: H3K9 PH*EFGS: methylation K: can PHO*FD: modify TPHA*EUBG: neighboring HO*EFPBTS: histone {^s} KW-BG: {,} TPHA*EUBG: neighboring SKHROEPLS: nucleosome {^s} KW-BG: {,} SKP: and HRO*U: allow W: with -T: the HEP: help -F: of HAO*EFPB: HP1 PRAO*EPB: protein TO: to SPRED: spread HO*ERPBT: heterochromatin TP-PL: {.} THR-S: there's S-G: something KAULD: called AEU: a PWR*ER: barrier SKWEPBS: sequence KW-BG: {,} WEU: which S: is TPH: in TPABGT: fact RAELTD: related TO: to APB: an SHRO*ERT: insulator KW-BG: {,} THA: that HR: will PWHROBG: block -T: the SPRED: spread -F: of HO*ERPBT: heterochromatin TP-PL: {.} THA: that HREFS: leaves KWRO*EPLT: euchromatin KW-BG: {,} -T: the TAEFL: actively TREUBD: transcribed RAOEGSZ: region {^s} TP-PL: {.} AEU: a KAOE: key TPARBGT: factor THA: that WORBGS: works TPH: in THAOES: these KAOEUPBDZ: kinds -F: of HREPLTS: elements KW-BG: {,} SHRO*ERTS: insulator {^s} SKP: and PWR*ERS: barriers KW-BG: {,} S: is APB: an 1-D: 11 STKPWEURPBG: zinc finger RERP: repressor PRAO*EPB: protein TP-PL: {.} U: you TPHOE: know WAOEF: we've TAUBGD: talked PW: about STKPWEURPBGS: zinc fingers KW-BG: {,} PRAO*EPBS: proteins THA: that TAEUPB: contain PH-PL: multiple STKPWEURPBGS: zinc fingers TP-PL: {.}

I hope this example makes it clear that the briefing techniques taught by the various Plover Theory learning materials can be applied to any domain of knowledge, and that when you've got a firm grasp on the jargon that you're writing and on the mnemonic pathways of your own particular brain, Plover Theory can be used to write very short indeed.

Type Type Lesson Generator!

Wow, check out Typey Type's new custom lesson generator! So many options to configure your lesson! The magnificent Di says:

You can select all the options you want, hit "Build lesson", and check out the preview of that material below. If you're happy with it, you can go to "Start generated lesson" right away, or you can scroll down to "Edit generated lesson" to make changes in the usual custom lesson setup page.

Intro to Stenography Coding

Check out this fantastic presentation by Paul at Ruby Australia! I always love Paul's demos, and this one is particularly good!

Steno Etudes for Developers

Steno Etudes for Developers is the ever-marvelous jladdjr's new project for helping developers acquire and practice steno skills that are intended to be useful in their work.

He says:

Just got a Polyglot and am starting to use it at work! I tried to think of a way to create bite-sized lessons for writing Steno at work. I remembered how, when I was practicing trombone, I had a book of small practice pieces called "etudes". Tried channeling that idea to come up with some practice sessions for using steno in a dev. job. I'm thinking that as I actually do practice I could refine these mini lessons so that (hopefully) they'd create a helpful path for anyone else trying to do the same thing.

There are 10 small etudes available already, and I believe more are planned. Right now they're just focused on development terminology, but I imagine some more symbol-rich etudes would fit in perfectly with the project as well. If you're feeling intimidated by your practice regimen and looking for something that allows for quick, incremental improvement, give it a try!

LaTeX with Steno!!

LaTeX (pronounced lay-tek because the X is a Greek chi, as in τέχνη) is a legendary markup language/software system for typesetting, often used for scientific or mathematical documents requiring fine-grained manipulation of symbols and other special characters. It's something I've been hearing about for most of my life, but I confess I've always been too intimidated by its complexity to investigate it in any detail. People have asked me several times over the years if steno can be used to typeset a complex document using LaTeX, and the ever-amazing Aerick has just made a fantastic demonstration video answering the question with his usual panache. So cool! I'm so happy to finally have a video I can point to when people ask me how steno could possibly handle such a complex task. Splendid work as always, Aerick!

Peridot, a New DIY Machine

The Peridot is a simple QMK-powered mechanical keyboard for using the Plover open source software for steno. Its creator, Neko Ewen, says:

There are a number of hobbyist steno keyboard designs out there, and my goal with the Peridot is to make one that’s easy to build (hence I used basic through-hole components throughout) and open source. How much it will cost will depend a lot on the specifics of the components you choose, but it’ll be vastly cheaper than a professional stenotype. Feel free to make, sell, remix, etc.; this is my attempt to give something back to the Plover community.

What a cool project for a hobbyist keyboard builder! If you make one, feel free to share it on the Hardware Showcase channel of our Discord!

Thumbs Up Machines!

Look at these beautiful machines I just received as free review models from SashaK! They're available in Sasha's Thumbs Up Shop. The design is quite striking! I'm gonna give my fingers a little time to get used to them, and then I'll post here with a full report! Many thanks to Sasha for these innovative new designs. I can't wait to try them out!

Practice Plover Updated

Practice Plover, according to its creator, plants, has just received ome updates!

Practice Plover has been updated with new sections on common prefixes/suffixes and even more practice text, and some more brief additions from yannc.

Always great to see more practice resources out there!

No News Today

Heya! No particular Open Steno news today, partly because I spent some time this evening talking up Open Steno to a group of a dozen or so student and professional stenographers online. It's gotten kind of late and I still need to do the dishes. But least I spent some time trying to get the word out! I don't have a huge amount of faith that the professional steno establishment (specifically the one embodied by the National Court Reporters Association) will ever choose to be much of a friend to Open Steno, but you never know, right? It's always worth a try.

The Picosteno, New From Nolltronics!

Introducing the Picosteno, a new low cost steno DIY kit from Nolltronics!

Nathan from Nolltronics says:

We’ve heard people ask for an even cheaper entry-level stenography keyboard, so we went ahead and made the Picosteno! We were able to cut costs by avoiding paying for PCB assembly, and replacing the aluminum backplate with a PCB backplate. The keyswitches and keycaps are still the best you can buy for hobbyist stenography at 20g actuation force, though if you want us to stock 15g springs (or have other suggestions), let us know! This is a DIY kit, meaning you will have to assemble the keyboard yourself! This includes soldering keyswitches and microcontroller, mounting the backplate, and flashing the firmware. All kits include two PCBs since one is used for the backplate.

TinyMod Saved My Bacon Again

I bought an Infinity Ergonomic in 2019, but it became more and more unreliable over time and finally became unusable last spring. A court reporter friend of mine had decided to become a software engineer and no longer wanted her steno machine (I tried to convince her to use it for coding, but she politely demurred), so she very generously gave her Infinity Ergonomic to me. Unfortunately that one failed yesterday. The company that makes them appears, unfortunately, to be defunct. I managed to find someone with a used one to sell and sent them the money for it today; it should be arriving by Wednesday if all goes well. But in the mean time, I've got a full week of captioning work to do. Before Plover, I would have panicked, screamed, freaked out, called all the steno colleagues I knew in the city to see if I could borrow one of their backup machines. But now I just threw my TinyMod, my Uni, and my Alienware n-key rollover laptop in my work bag and had three steno machines on hand for the day. I wound up doing all of today on the TinyMod, and it served me excellently well. It was a little clackier than my Infinity, and not as ergonomic, but I got through the day with no issues, and I can't express how grateful I am to have these backup machines on hand when I need them. It provides tremendous peace of mind and flexibility. Inexpressible thanks to Charley and Peter for making such excellent portable and affordable machines!

Erland's Beautiful Uni

Look at this lovely customized Uni v2, taken from the StenoKeyboards Discord. Striking and whimsical. A work of art!

New Plover2CAT version released

plants from the Plover Discord says:

plover2CAT has a new version 1.4.2. It can do rtf export (thanks, Elizabeth), translating from tape, and ability to set custom shortcuts for menu items.

Download the new version from GitHub!

Big Javelin Firmware Update

From the Discord:

Javelin's online tools have been revamped over the last week. Newly added tools include add translation, writing speed, layout display, and console access, and most existing tools have been upgraded in some way. The full range of tools requires new firmware, but even older builds should have access to most of what's there.

You can find these all at: https://lim.au/#/software/javelin-steno-tools

Paul's Steno Elixir Demo!

Paul Fioravanti, a longtime friend of The Open Steno Project, gave a presentation at the Sydney Elixir Meetup last week, demonstrating his steno workflow when coding in Elixir. He even realtime captions himself for some of it! Great stuff.

Cool Stuff Brewing

I haven't yet been given permission to post photos or videos of the very promising prototype under development in the #HobbyistLeverMachine thread in the #hardware-dev channel in the Plover Discord, but let me just say it's super impressive, and progressing at astounding speed. If that sounds like your cup of tea, you should totally go check it out!!

Aerick and His Multipurpose Multisteno

Aerick describes in this lovely video how he's replaced the bulky standard default keyboard with just a Multisteno for everything but gaming, using movement modifiers, symbol and command dictionaries, and the Multisteno's qwerty layer. So cool to see!

Embedded Steno on My Uni!

The amazing Peter of StenoKeyboards gave me a free Uni v4 after I mentioned wanting one to teach my kid on! I flashed Javelin firmware on it really easily. The hardest part was cleaning up my dictionary file, which had some malformed entries in it that Plover doesn't seem to notice but which Javelin doesn't approve of. A few rounds of regular expressions were sufficient to zap them, though, and then the firmware builder gave me a file that I was able to flash to the Uni with zero problems. Totally smooth and simple. The Uni now writes English into any text field without having to install Plover, including on my kid's Chromebook! We spent some time going over the basics of the layout and drilling a few easy lessons on Typey Type today, and he's really excited to learn more. Thanks so much to Peter for the free Uni and to Jeffrey for the Javelin firmware!