Using Open Steno Hardware and Software with NCRA Tests

The ever-amazing Jen has written up a fantastic guide to using Plover, Javelin, n-key rollover keyboards, and hobbyist machines when taking NCRA tests! My own NCRA testing years are far behind me, thank goodness, but if you've ever thought about dipping your toe into official certification, this guide is invaluable.

Typey Type Improvements

Typey Type just doesn't stop getting better, huh?

Di's latest Patreon update lays out all the fantastic improvements!

KAOES game improvements
The Typey Type KAOES game now has an option to play with Raw or QWERTY steno input. Thanks to trustyset for their feedback on the KAOES and suggesting QWERTY steno mode is added!

To use the raw steno option, you can use a dictionary to type raw steno. I created this raw steno dictionary that you can download from the Typey Type KAOES help modal or the GitHub steno dictionaries repository. When using the raw steno dictionary and raw steno mode, the KAOES game will clear the input whenever you type " *". Thanks go to another Typey Type student using the feedback form for pointing out the challenges of typing the star key when Plover treats star as undo!

For the folks that know their way around developer tools…

… you can also tweak your local data data to set a custom number of rounds to win the KAOES game. Set the typey-KAOES-rounds key in your local storage to a number between 1 and 10000 and refresh the page. This is only an experiment so far so you won't see the max rounds number update on the page, but if you've set a high number you'll have an effectively infinite KAOES game. Thanks again to the Typey Type student who suggested that through the feedback form!

No more stroke "overruns"
In the past, if you typed a word like "French" but accidentally hit the "-S" key, Typey Type would see the text "French", mark it correct, type "es", and mark the next word incorrect. Well, no more! Typey Type will now let all the text of "Frenches" appear without marking the word "French" correct until you fix the typo. This was a complex challenge to solve, and huge thanks go to na2hiro for writing the code to fix that!

Updated backup banner
The Progress page has also had a visual update. There used to be a couple of large panels explaining how and why to import and export your words progress. They were so large that some new starters didn't realise there was more to the page underneath. So the visual update has reduced the amount of space taken up for this. But some new starters also lose their progress by accident and get frustrated and abandon steno! So we made sure to keep the new banner prominent and to the point: Back up your progress regularly. Thanks again to na2hiro for sharing their feedback of their experience with the Progress page and for writing the code to update it!

Bookmarked lesson searches
The main Lessons page now shows your search text in the address bar. This lets me share a links like a search for all lessons with "fingerspelling" or "briefs" in the title e.g. https://didoesdigital.com/typey-type/lessons?q=fingerspelling

This also means if you search for a lesson, go to it, then hit the back button, your search will still be there.

Thanks again to na2hiro for writing the code for that! Behind the scenes, na2hiro has also been contributing lots of code to update how "state" is managed in Typey Type, which has made some subtle changes to how pages load and made Typey Type more resilient against errors (from flakey Internet connections). We've been making these changes so that Typey Type is easier to change and maintain, which I hope will make it more inviting for more developers to contribute. It certainly makes my life easier!

Yawei Chinese steno
There's now a Yawei Chinese steno layout option. Thanks to Devin for reaching out to me and collaborating to make that diagram and its behaviour possible!

If you use this layout, let me know! I'd love to hear feedback.

Dictionary improvements
Thanks to Monniasza for sharing feedback on the steno dictionaries repository! I've made a handful of dictionary updates to reduce misstrokes shown to people on Typey Type. It is a continuous activity!

Other updates
The KHAERT bot has more responses to questions about Plover now, thanks to student feedback. Feel free to suggest more!

Type Type now remembers your preference to "hide settings" when you come back to it.

The Italian Michela layout on the Writer page now fits better on small screens.

Updates some entries in the longest single-stroke briefs lesson since some previously single-stroke words were removed.

Updates links to Learn Plover since it moved.

Added a little detail about me to the About page for some curious folks.

Reduced some errors from Google translate

I don't always share smaller updates until I have a few to share together, but this may have been a bit overdue! I hope you like these improvements. As always, let me know what feedback you have!