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!