Use Plover + VLC for Timecoded Transcription

I've done my time in the transcription mines, starting in-house at a handful of firms and using proprietary software, then going freelance and mostly using a combination of Vim plus either Winamp or VLC. On the steno side, I first used DigitalCAT, then Eclipse, then Plover, and moved from play/pausing audio with a footpedal to using only steno commands. I still take on transcription from time to time, though I haven't accepted any jobs requiring timecodes in years and years, mostly because it's felt like too much trouble to figure out a good workflow for them. Happily, Ted rides to the rescue with a step-by-step post on how to add timecodes to your text file using Plover's VLC plugin. If you're a transcriptionist or considering dipping a toe into the biz, check it out!

Limited Time Offer: StenoGherkins At Cost!

The amazingly generous Paul, new Open Steno community member, recently made an incredible offer: If you buy the parts for a Gherkin keyboard, he'll assemble it for you, no charge! He enjoys assembling keyboards and wants to help people get low-cost, ultraportable machines, even if they don't have any electronics experience. Of course, this offer is always dependent on his own amount of free time and energy. He can't guarantee it'll be valid forever, so I encourage anyone in need of a StenoGherkin to get while the getting's good!



As he said on the Plover Discord:

If I am putting it together for you I will include the standoffs and screws, I have plenty and won't ask you to buy 50 standoffs and 100 screws when you only need a dozen or so but if you're doing this yourself, you want m2 hardware and standoffs at least 10mm long, 10 is the perfect length in my opinion but you will have to trim down the pins the pro micro is soldered to, like this https://bit.ly/2IiVmvr. Not a problem just a caveat.

Keycaps you're on your own for, I can throw in some for a couple bucks just so you have something to use right away but ultimately you will have to source your own and decide what you like (the ones I can include will be DSA profile and could be any color or have any markings on them, whatever I have laying around from grab bags)

G-20 profile caps are very popular for mx style switches and steno, probably the most popular. if you want them, just google 'ortholinear G-20 keycaps' or 'planck G-20 keycaps' these will yield results with only the 1unit caps (almost, the planck sets will usually have a single 2unit cap as well for the space bar on certain planck layouts) which are all you'll need. For this layout, you NEED 25 but you'll probably want 30 so you have a cap for every switch, even if you don't put one on all of them(edited)

Gherkin build materials list:

PCB kit, $20
Pro micro, $8
Diodes, $2.50
Gateron clears, $7.50 for the 30 needed (you can pick any MX style switches you like. MX style is very important to make sure they work with the board. The lightest weight linears possible are what you're looking for. These are only 35 grams of force and would be perfect for most people). I'll update the link if an even better option presents itself.

Typey-Type Update

Typey-Type has been updated with more public domain lessons and the ability to review error strokes after lessons. Thanks to Di for her continuous improvement of this excellent resource.

Passive Haptic Learning for Computer Stenography

Check out this fantastic video by longtime open steno community member Tim! He's been working on research designed to lower the steno learning curve by introducing haptic stimuli into the learning process. The premise seems extremely sound to me, and he's gotten very promising results so far, so I'm really excited to see where this will go.

More Laptops with NKRO!

The number of NKRO-enabled laptops has been exploding recently! I've got an Alienware 13, and it honestly works pretty well with Plover, but it's a bit on the heavy side. Lead dev Ted has compiled a list of 11 laptops sporting NKRO keyboards, which offers much more choice than we've had up to this point. I'm not currently on the market for a new machine, but when I am I'll definitely be consulting this list, and I'm really happy to see this trend in new high-end and gaming-focused machines. I hope it keeps going!

Dotterel: Steno for Android!

Dotterel, a new steno keyboard for Android, was released a few days ago. (GIF above courtesy of lead dev Ted.) We've had StenoIME available for several years, but it hasn't been in development for quite some time, and has always had a number of issues that made it difficult to use. Dotterel, by community member Nimble, has greatly improved on the idea, and I find it to be a lovely swipe-style steno keyboard interface. On my rather small phone, it works best in landscape mode, though on a tablet portrait would probably be just fine. You can swipe, tap, or use a physical keyboard using a USB-on-the-go adapter, and it has quite a bit of clever context sensing that allows for accurate error correction and jumping between text fields without messing up your translation. Feel free to download it and play around with it, and if you have any suggestions on ways it can be improved, contribute to the issues thread on Nimble's Github.

New Weekly Released!

Our stalwart devs have released a new weekly version of Plover!

Mostly incremental changes to get ready for our next big release, but if any of these issues affect you, feel free to give this new version a try! And, as always, if you encounter anything unexpected, let our devs know on Github and/or in the #devs channel of the Plover Discord.

Changes

• disable serial flow control settings when not applicable (this was known to cause weird issues when changed from default)
• the paper tape now has improved support for non-Latin keys
• the log files encoding is now always set to UTF-8 (so Unicode in translations is properly handled)
• configuration changes by plugins are now fully validated before being applied
• improve support for installing plugins from source
• when running from a distribution, Plover can be started with --no-user-plugins to disable user plugins: the distribution default embedded plugins will still be available, so the plugins manager can be used to update/remove a problematic plugin
• [Linux] fix crash when using a Microsoft keyboard
• [Linux] fix crash when the window manager does not support the NETWM protocol (with commands like {PLOVER:ADD_TRANSLATION})