Plover: free, open-source stenography engine

At first I thought it was some of way to hide messages within fb/whatsapp messages.

I found it hard to pick out the ones that are about this project. This one is. Others?

Plover is a free, open-source stenography engine - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27602077 - June 2021 (124 comments)

> Can anyone convince me?

I find it extremely cringy to talk to a machine and get very annoyed at correcting transcription errors in the middle of a sentence or paragraph after it was transcribed. If you don't find it cringy to use voice assistants I guess you're just a different type of person and would prefer talking instead of typing.

I also picked up a basic steno keyboard earlier in 2022 (the EcoSteno, I think). I'm no good with it yet (I'm still working through layout drills, honestly), but for me, the draw isn't in transcription or text input specifically, but in chord-based control over my computer more generally.

A standard computer keyboard layout has ~100 keys. You can use various modifier keys (Ctrl, Alt, Shift, Meta) and combinations thereof to assign multiple meanings to each key, which morally organizes the keyboard into layers depending on which modifiers are active, but most layers are inconvenient to reach -- anything beyond two modifiers gets annoying and sees limited use. You're almost always on the unmodified layer.

A stenotype board has only ~20 keys, but the unit of input is an entire set of keys rather than a single key. In principle, you can comfortably enter chords of up to 10 keys at once, giving ~184,756 (20 choose 10) inputs. This is modified a bit by ergonomics, but it's still orders of magnitude more possibilities than an idealized keyboard with modifiers (something like 1,600).

That kind of space for addressing commands begs for some kind of principled organization. The Plover community calls assignments of commands to chords "dictionaries", and they generally follow an internally-consistent set of rules called a "theory". If you're working with English input, for example, you'll learn a theory that lets you almost always reason out the chord for a word.

There's nothing that limits stenographic input to transcription, though. You can assemble, say, a dictionary of Emacs commands, and assign related commands chords that share a common subset of keys. (Emacs is kind of like this already IMHO, but I am not a fan of the modifier+key system -- it feels like the addressing space is too small, and I'm afraid to customize the default keymap.)

Moreover, you aren't limited to single-chord input either. Multi-chord input is common; you can easily define entries in the dictionary which are based on a sequence of chords. I believe (but lack the experience to confirm) that English dictionaries tend to be organized around syllables or syllable clusters; the normal English stenotype layout specifically has sections for initial consonent, vowel, and terminal consonant, and theories tend to organize around that structure. Again, there's no reason you can't apply the same tools to non-transcription inputs.

I think this is a really cool input system, and for my interests, complementary to a regular QWERTY keyboard. I still want to learn a proper English theory (to avoid having to switch frequently between multiple keyboards!), but I mostly just want to have the option of chorded input in the first place.

You don't need to memorize each word's combination, although you eventually will as you type them frequently enough. It's shorthand for typing, where you can transcribe any word. You are chording syllables and in many cases, entire words, but you are not spelling each letter of a word. I am no steno expert, and my speed is not there yet, but I am benefiting from less finger movement and stress. It is also neat to rewire your brain to do something different. I am learning Colemak layout as well for touch typing.

Otter.ai is great, but it still makes mistakes, and it tends to make them in domain- or project-specific telerminology which typically is the most important to get right. Which means you need to proof read and fix the transcripts. This can later take the same amount of time as the meeting itself. If there's a way to make an accurate transcript on the fly, then it's better than voice to text.

Speed.

150 wpm talking vs 200-250 wpm with stenography.

Putting on my narrator’s hat for a moment, I’d also point out that speaking clearly for hours on end is hard, and not something you can do without preparation (copious amounts of water, a room with little background noise, a good microphone, etc). Any of the preparation that’s skipped makes it harder to speak clearly and be understood.

Sometimes you need to both type and listen to other people talking, so talking over them would be pretty rude. Also typing with text to speech in a public place would really rob you of privacy.

Honestly for me steno is about ergonomics. It seems like steno should be harder than normal typing but you’re making so many fewer strokes that it takes a ton of strain off of your hands. Typing faster is a happy side effect.

There's plenty of room to do improve on standard QWERTY keyboard in a technically interesting way.

Although not related to chorded-input like Plover uses, I'd suggest something like https://github.com/manna-harbour/miryoku

While good so much for APL, plover is quite suited to writing something like python.

Also it would be likely that you wrote more words then dense code, just did to comments and team communication.

On the other hand programming also involves writing a lot of prose: documentation, comments, github issues, slack etc.

I will try this! Is your dictionary available anywhere? Do you use ZipChord for writing code too?

American Heritage dictionary says either pronunciation is acceptable:

https://ahdictionary.com/word/search.html?q=plover&submit.x=...

I've always said ploh-ver (rhymes with clover), but that comes not from any birding experience, but from drinking Andytown's Snowy Plovers[1]. I believe the staff there has always said ploh-ver as well, but it's been a while and I could be mistaken.

Seems like jury is out amongst birders[2]

[1] https://thebolditalic.com/the-snowy-plover-is-the-tastiest-d...

[2] https://www.10000birds.com/ploverpronunciationpoll.htm