[HN Gopher] Plover: free, open-source stenography engine ___________________________________________________________________ Plover: free, open-source stenography engine Author : tosh Score : 191 points Date : 2023-01-08 11:01 UTC (11 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.openstenoproject.org) (TXT) w3m dump (www.openstenoproject.org) | ndsipa_pomu wrote: | So, I've now learnt that I've been pronouncing "plover" wrong (I | thought it rhymes with "clover", not "lover"). | | Also, is it just me that immediately thinks of Colossal Cave | Adventure? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colossal_Cave_Adventure | everybodyknows wrote: | American Heritage dictionary says either pronunciation is | acceptable: | | https://ahdictionary.com/word/search.html?q=plover&submit.x=... | vouaobrasil wrote: | Perhaps, but almost every birder would look at you strangely | if you pronounced it like pl-oh-ver. Plover rhyming with | lover is universal amongst birders. | grahamplace wrote: | 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 | andry_ad wrote: | Can somebody share their experience learning Plover as non-native | English speaker? | meibo wrote: | I would love to try this some time, and then I remember that I | spend 90% of the time on my PC programming, and then I get sad | and settle with my qwerty. | rgoulter wrote: | 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 | namibj wrote: | 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. | charcircuit wrote: | No, plover is suited to transcribing speech. It is not | suitable for writing code, although it is possible to | shoehorn it into that use case. | mjklin wrote: | I was considering learning Plover and even bought a keyboard to | learn, but that was about the time that Otter.ai and other | speech-to-text tools started becoming excellent. So I thought, | what's the point? | | Can anyone convince me? I may still like to learn, but consider | that it's much more difficult than touch typing. _Each word_ has | its own combination that must be memorized (or sometimes a series | of words). Think of the difference between learning the Roman | alphabet vs learning Chinese characters. There is seemingly no | end to it. | bad_username wrote: | 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. | Twisol wrote: | 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. | falcolas wrote: | 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. | vasco wrote: | > 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. | melling wrote: | I also get annoyed at correcting voice errors. Wish it was | better. | | However, I don't find it cringy. Seems like that would be a | more natural interface. It would make mobile devices more | productive, for example. | | Hang out in a park and write, develop software, etc on a | tablet or phone. Removing the keyboard from the computer | makes it seem more natural to me. | dinkleberg wrote: | Cringy? That is an interesting take. | | I can sympathize with the dislike of voice assistance as they | are pretty universally crap. But recording yourself | monologuing and having it AI transcribed can feel really | natural. | | I still default to typing, but whenever I'm feeling writers | block, I'll just start thinking out loud and record it to get | started and it works quite nicely. | vasco wrote: | > Cringy? That is an interesting take. | | Yeah I'm not sure if I'm just weird or what, but from the | start with voice assistants I've been utterly confused that | people want to talk to machines using a shitty interface | and broadcasting to others what they are doing (not even | talking about the NSA, just people in my vicinity). Imagine | being in my room, saying out loud each URL I wanted to | visit. It feels as cringy as if instead of turning a page | silently in a book while I'm sitting in my room reading, I | would instead disrupt that silence and focus by telling the | book "TURN PAGE". That's how it feels to me when I hear | someone say "OKAY GOOGLE", I almost physically recoil. | | It's like you have a nice silent interface that will be | perfectly interpreted, and decide instead to be loud and | imprecise and have to guess if the machine is going to | understand you. I think maybe rather than cringy another | word would be that it feels in bad taste. It's half about | the "style" and half about the lack of "function" of the | medium. It's effectively worse in terms of reliability and | you look like someone that doesn't know how to use a | computer all at the same time. | upsidesinclude wrote: | "Okay google" is so gross. Totally the apex of imposed | advertising. | | Physically recoil in fact, like a bitter taste in my | mouth. | | However, as opposed to some assistant turning imaginary | 'pages' in .epub, sitting alone in focused dictation is a | really great way to explore your mind and have free | roaming thought processes. | | It is also not new in any sense, e.g., Dostoyevsky | dictated _The Idiot_ to a stenographer. | dinkleberg wrote: | Ah, I get what you mean. For any interaction, I fully | agree with you. I would hate to be in a room with someone | who is interacting with their machine through voice. | | I was reading the parent of your post as using these | speech-to-text tools for dictation, not for interaction. | I think they can be quite useful for dictation (if they | can interpret your voice well). | melling wrote: | That brings up the other natural user interface that's | missing, which is gesture recognition. | | https://atap.google.com/soli/ | | I suppose it'll take another generation before people | start to wonder why everyone used to hunch over a | computer "in the old days" | retrac wrote: | I wouldn't use the word cringy myself, but I think I get | where they're coming from. Reading the output of speech | recognition a few seconds behind is jarring. Constant game | of anticipation. Will it get that name or term right? Nope. | Now I have to pause dictation, go back, and fix it. It's | more involved than tapping backspace a couple times, the | feedback is less instant, and that means more things I have | to keep in my working memory, which is non-existent. | eggy wrote: | 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. | tsuujin wrote: | 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. | elil17 wrote: | I've found that ZipChord offers the best trade of between | convenience (does not require N-key rollover, can continue to | type normally on a QWERTY keyboard for most words) and speed. It | lets you type a chord of several characters at once to type a | word (e.g. I have "eml" set to type my email address and "bw" to | type "between"). | | The recent 2.0 beta release is a game changer, it has gotten | really good at distinguishing character entry from chording (e.g. | if you type need and hit the e and d key at the same time by | accident, it won't trigger your "ed" chord). | | Only works on windows though. | | https://github.com/psoukie/zipchord/releases | melling wrote: | Over the past decade there have been some interesting discussions | about Plover on HN | | https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu... | | The video in the first result was good: | | https://youtu.be/Wpv-Qb-dB6g | dang wrote: | 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) | shric wrote: | I believe all of the results from the first page of GP's | search are about this except the ones that mention "browser | fileshare". | dang wrote: | Ah thanks! Here's a better list: | | _Plover is a free, open-source stenography engine_ - | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27602077 - June 2021 | (124 comments) | | _Plover: Thought to Text at 240 WPM (2013) [video]_ - | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8510409 - Oct 2014 | (119 comments) | | _Plover: Thought to Text at 240 WPM_ - | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6936210 - Dec 2013 (4 | comments) ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2023-01-08 23:00 UTC)