[HN Gopher] Plover is a free, open-source stenography engine
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Plover is a free, open-source stenography engine
        
       Author : smitty1e
       Score  : 160 points
       Date   : 2021-06-23 08:12 UTC (14 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.openstenoproject.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.openstenoproject.org)
        
       | BossingAround wrote:
       | Pardon my grumpiness, but you know a name is sub-optimal when one
       | references the pronunciation right in the title. Or maybe it's
       | another cutesy pun, or an 'in-group' reference. Those always work
       | out, right? :)
        
         | taneq wrote:
         | This is a great rule. It's right up there with "if you have to
         | spell out your new kid's name every time, don't call them that
         | (or at least don't spell it that way" and "when you write a
         | comment, explain it to your duck, then delete the original and
         | replace it with what you told the duck."
        
           | simcop2387 wrote:
           | Reminds me of the movie, That Thing You Do, with the original
           | band name, The Oneders, or as the record producer asks them,
           | "The Oh-need-ers?".
        
           | aidenn0 wrote:
           | I'm a bit annoyed because I have a daughter whose name was
           | pronounced correctly by everyone when she was young (it was
           | an alternate spelling of a popular name, there was a fairly
           | well known actress with it spelled and pronounced that way).
           | 
           | In the past decade though, there's a new name spelled the
           | same way but with a different pronunciation and everyone now
           | says her name wrong... she's taken to going by her middle
           | name now because of how much it annoys her.
        
         | aidenn0 wrote:
         | It's an actual word in the English language, so if one were so
         | inclined one could look up the pronunciation in a dictionary.
        
         | deegles wrote:
         | Brings to mind a certain database frequently discussed on HN...
         | _ducks_
        
       | kozak wrote:
       | How relevant is stenography today, now that we have ubiquitous
       | voice recording and voice recognition? What are the use cases?
       | I'm genuinely curious.
        
         | kleiba wrote:
         | Wherever the GDPR applies (and possibly similar regulations
         | elsewhere), you cannot record someone's voice without prior
         | consent. So, taking notes in meetings or courts is usually not
         | possible/practical via voice recordings.
        
         | another-dave wrote:
         | I'd imagine that accuracy is a key driver -- e.g. for something
         | like a courtroom setting, I think I'd more trust a professional
         | stenographer to record proceedings accurately that a programme
         | that's doing automated speech-to-text and then someone going
         | through to correct errors afterwards while listening to a
         | recording.
         | 
         | As an aside, I'd consider a different name if you need to say
         | "rhymes with" (especially as without that I'd naturally read it
         | as rhyming with clover).
        
         | base2john wrote:
         | Good explanation on the value of human captioning,
         | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKe1O7ppyqQ
        
         | detaro wrote:
         | voice recognition might be ubiquitious, but _good_ voice
         | recognition is not, and until that changes it 's relevant. E.g.
         | professional event live-capturing is going to be steno most of
         | the time, for people doing subtitling on videos it's a useful
         | skill for speed reasons, ...
        
       | thejosh wrote:
       | I got recommended this on my YouTube over the weekend and learnt
       | about steno, something I don't know much about.
       | https://youtu.be/nRp_1S7cj6A
       | 
       | Fascinating stuff!
        
         | Tijdreiziger wrote:
         | Ha, same. YouTube must have been recommending that video to
         | more people.
        
       | kqr wrote:
       | The big drawback with Plover-type stenography is that it requires
       | a massive base dictionary for the language it's going to be used
       | with. That's a big up-front investment unless you're lucky and
       | someone has already done the work.
       | 
       | In Europe, stenography usually works on a slightly different
       | orthographic principle, meaning you still chord words, but
       | generally you're explicit about each character. That makes it
       | much more flexible in terms of new languages.
       | 
       | I'm still waiting for a solid, free QWERTY implementation of
       | that. I started working on one[1] a while ago but I just can't
       | find the time to get it done and maintain it.
       | 
       | If anyone would pay me competitively to work on anything I
       | wanted, this would be it. Hugely important for marginalised
       | groups in society, seems like it could be very convenient for
       | regular people too.
       | 
       | [1]: https://github.com/kqr/qweyboard/
        
         | cjbprime wrote:
         | Interesting! Do you know how it deals with ambiguity? I saw the
         | part about using key order to disambiguate which key was the
         | first letter. But what about words with remaining ambiguity? Or
         | words when there's an "s" in the word, but also a plural form
         | ending "s" that you might want instead of the singular?
        
           | kqr wrote:
           | The honest (and unfortunately short) answer is: No. I don't
           | know.
           | 
           | Maybe it makes sense at least in some instances to repurpose
           | the Z as a plural S, but I suspect it will be somewhat
           | dependent on what comes before it.
        
             | cjbprime wrote:
             | Thanks for the answer! Perhaps someone could write a script
             | calculating what percentage of common words can be
             | expressed unambiguously using this keyboard? It seems like
             | the percentage would be quite low to me (considering e.g.
             | 80% to be "low" given how often you'd have to issue slow
             | corrections), but I might be misunderstanding the rules and
             | I expect it would improve in English with your Z-as-S idea.
        
               | kqr wrote:
               | The general idea has been used for decades in Europe by
               | people doing closed captioning for live television and
               | other types of speed-demanding work. So the idea is tried
               | and true, and I have no worries about ambiguity from that
               | perspective.
               | 
               | The bits I'm uncertain about are the specific details
               | around substitutions and such.
        
           | arxanas wrote:
           | I use Z for plurals exclusively; that's one common system.
           | You might be interested in my post:
           | https://blog.waleedkhan.name/my-steno-system/#orthography
           | 
           | For homophones, I use a different vowel (OEU = oi, the least
           | used vowel sound; AE is an extra vowel sound not representing
           | anything). For proper vs common names, i often duplicate the
           | stroke (e.g. MAT = "mat", MAT/MAT = "Matt").
        
         | arxanas wrote:
         | Plover comes with an expansive English dictionary by default
         | (developed by one of the creators, used in their work over many
         | years). Its ready to use out of the box. It also has support
         | for some other languages, with some other (smaller) base
         | dictionaries.
        
           | kqr wrote:
           | Which are some other? I can only find French and Spanish (and
           | "beginner Italian") with a quick search. These are the three
           | biggest Latin/Germanic languages -- not a huge selection.
        
       | Sholmesy wrote:
       | Tried plover (with a Georgi) for a few months.
       | 
       | It is fun, addictive almost to learn, but it would take a long
       | time before i feel comfortable to write in it on the daily.
       | 
       | I think learning it for ergonomic reasons is far more beneficial
       | than any perceived speed increases, unless you're really willing
       | to sit down and grind.
        
       | iLemming wrote:
       | Has anyone tried Plover with Kinesis Advantage? I love my
       | keyboard, I am deeply habituated to use it and I tried many other
       | (similar) boards, but I just don't feel as much comfort with
       | anything else. I wanted to learn Plover for a long time, but I
       | don't think my keyboard is a good option here. What do you guys
       | think?
        
         | SudoAlex wrote:
         | As someone learning stenography (but with a different keyboard)
         | - try it and see, however your ability might be hindered
         | without the right keyboard, key switches _and_ keycaps.
         | 
         | I bought an ortholinear keyboard with DSA keycaps to get
         | started, which is absolutely fine when you're chording fairly
         | simple words, however once I reached a point where words
         | involved chording multiple keys from the top and bottom rows -
         | it started to become a little bit painful. After switching to
         | F10 keycaps [1], it made a huge difference in the enjoyment of
         | chording more advanced words.
         | 
         | [1] https://pimpmykeyboard.com/f10-flat-key-keyset/
        
         | Germanika wrote:
         | I haven't tried it, it looks to me like it doesn't support
         | N-key rollover out of the box which would definitely be a
         | problem. You can try it out but if you wanted to put more
         | serious time into it, I'd highly recommend picking up something
         | more dedicated like the "Georgi" listed here:
         | https://github.com/openstenoproject/plover/wiki/Supported-Ha...
        
       | xkfm wrote:
       | This project got me to buy a full NKRO keyboard.
       | 
       | I dislike how every system/theory has their own dictionary for
       | words and in addition to that, it's heavily encouraged to
       | customize your dictionary for the work you're doing. The
       | customization makes it much harder to learn. Think extensive
       | emacs/vim shortcut customization but worse (in my opinion) and
       | much, much more common.
       | 
       | It is fun essentially typing syllables instead of individual
       | letters. When I was learning, I found a lot of mismatches between
       | how I thought a word sounded, and what the dictionary thought. It
       | felt like relearning English.
       | 
       | Other downsides (at the time), was that there's no real slowing
       | down. You're either typing syllables quickly, or you're not
       | writing anything. There's a way to type individual letters but
       | it's pretty slow, and you have to stop plover (toggle it off), to
       | type normally (which is slightly faster).
        
       | lmilcin wrote:
       | I am currently working on a keyboard with a plan to put plover on
       | it, so that I can use it at work without installing any software
       | on the work PC.
        
         | intrepidhero wrote:
         | That's a cool idea! Are you posting your progress anywhere? I'd
         | love to follow along.
        
           | lmilcin wrote:
           | I don't post my private projects because after work and kids
           | I have barely any time for them.
           | 
           | The keyboard is going to be mechanical with Bluetooth,
           | trackpoint and maybe tiny OLED display. The whole point of
           | this is that it runs my software and so I can put on it
           | whatever layout, logic and other shenanigans I want.
           | 
           | I already have it working as both mouse and keyboard and got
           | two sets of Cherry MX silent red switches.
           | 
           | While the trackpoint is working great, I don't yet know how I
           | am exactly going to fit it between keys. An idea I have is to
           | sacrifice one key completely and make it a trackpoint with a
           | custom keycap (rubber red?)
           | 
           | The way this works is that controller detects that trackpoint
           | is in use and maps some other keys on home row of left hand
           | side to function as mouse buttons.
           | 
           | There is going to be microsd for software and configuration
           | updates.
           | 
           | I have not yet started with plover. I just looked at the code
           | and I know this is probably going to cost major effort to get
           | it to run on STM32.
           | 
           | There is also this post from Plover developer on additional
           | challenges to get it done: https://www.reddit.com/r/Plover/co
           | mments/6ucy15/stenography_...
           | 
           | I don't agree that this is necessarily a huge problem that
           | can't be resolved.
        
         | DavidVoid wrote:
         | Check out stenogotchi [1] if you haven't already. Plover
         | running on a battery-powered Rasperi Pi Zero.
         | 
         | [1] https://github.com/Anodynous/stenogotchi
        
       | foolinaround wrote:
       | would stenography help in taking class notes, where the goal is
       | not to reproduce the material verbatim?
       | 
       | would there be additional cognitive load on the brain trying to
       | find the right set of keys, even as one tries to ingest the
       | materials being taught?
        
         | arxanas wrote:
         | You can get proficient to the level where it's the same
         | additional mental overhead as regular typing, unless there's
         | significant domain-specific jargon. It could be argued that the
         | struggle in recording notes is what makes you learn, and typing
         | them up is a hindrance in that sense.
        
       | JBorrow wrote:
       | One thing on the rhyming - you say on one page it rimes with
       | 'lover' and on another that it rhymes with 'hover'. In many
       | people's accents, these are spoken quite differently...
        
         | bloak wrote:
         | Yes, they are different in standard British English:
         | 
         | hover /'hav@/
         | 
         | lover /'l^v@/
         | 
         | rover /'r@Uv@/
         | 
         | The bird "plover" is like "lover": /'pl^v@/
        
           | afandian wrote:
           | Not only that, but (at a guess) I'd say think the southern
           | /^/ sound in Plover might come out more /o/ in northern
           | English?
           | 
           | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-mid_back_rounded_vowel
           | 
           | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-mid_back_unrounded_vowel
        
           | [deleted]
        
         | cmckn wrote:
         | I know you're correct, but I cannot for the life of me remember
         | or imagine how people pronounce these differently, even after
         | having it explained many times. Is "hover" done like "over"
         | (long 'o')?
        
           | [deleted]
        
           | have_faith wrote:
           | Ho as in hot, lo sounds like lu from lush.
        
           | Ballas wrote:
           | I think hov-er and huv-er.
        
           | cromulent wrote:
           | Lover (and plover, the bird) are pronounced with the "o"
           | sounding the same as the "u" in "cut" or "gut" or "puck".
           | 
           | Hover is pronounced with the "o" as in "hop" or "hot".
        
             | jhgb wrote:
             | ...and this is why IPA was invented.
        
               | celticninja wrote:
               | Indian pale ale?
               | 
               | Seems like this has upset some people.
               | 
               | https://www.google.com/search?q=ipa&oq=ipa&aqs=chrome.0.6
               | 9i5...
               | 
               | First hit on Google is for India Pale Ales.
               | 
               | I always heard the phonetic alphabet referred to as the
               | NATO phonetic alphabet. It doesn't seem very
               | international given that it is entirely in English.
               | 
               | Also Russia has its own version https://en.m.wikipedia.or
               | g/wiki/Russian_spelling_alphabet#:~....
               | 
               | So IPA is a bit of a misnomer I feel.
        
               | danaris wrote:
               | The International Phonetic Alphabet isn't just "Alpha,
               | Bravo, Charlie"--in fact, it has absolutely nothing to do
               | with the NATO "Phonetic Alphabet", and anywhere you heard
               | that referred to as the International Phonetic Alphabet
               | was just simply wrong. It's an actual alphabet, designed
               | to represent all the phonemes humans actually use in
               | speech--not just in English.
               | 
               | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Phonetic_Alph
               | abe...
        
               | celticninja wrote:
               | Either way the acronym is ambiguous at best.
        
               | jhgb wrote:
               | How is IPA ambiguous when talking about pronunciations of
               | words?
        
               | celticninja wrote:
               | Well I googled IPA and the first Wikipedia hit (2nd
               | result) was India Pale Ale, which is the acronym I am
               | familiar with.
               | 
               | The first link was to https://ipa.co.uk Web results The
               | Institute of Practitioners in Advertising: IPA
               | 
               | So I think calling it ambiguous is ok, you are if course
               | free to disagree, but what I said wasn't fundamentally
               | incorrect. But it seems like HN has a bee in its bonnet.
        
             | j1elo wrote:
             | Fun fact: _the "o" [in "lover"] sounding the same as the
             | "u" in "cut"_ is actually an "a" in spanish.
        
               | Y_Y wrote:
               | Not in my accent! I think you'll have to be more
               | specific.
               | 
               | (both accents fairly neutral, English from England,
               | Spanish from Spain)
        
               | j1elo wrote:
               | That's curious. I have never heard the word "cut" being
               | pronounced without the "a" sound (in the vecinity of how
               | "cat" sounds in "category") by someone who had a neutral
               | English accent. Where is it from?
        
           | cannam wrote:
           | > Is "hover" done like "over" (long 'o')?
           | 
           | No, it's not that - at least in British English - referring
           | to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:IPA/English, "hover"
           | uses a ("LOT, blockade, song") while "lover" uses ^ ("STRUT,
           | untidy, trustee, sung").
           | 
           | In British English, plover (the bird) rhymes with lover but
           | not with hover.
           | 
           | I always have difficulties in the opposite direction, namely
           | imagining how such vowels can be merged - a classic for me
           | was a programming manual once that told me "char" (the
           | keyword) should be pronounced care, "like the start of the
           | word character". Confused the heck out of me, since where I
           | come from the vowel at the start of the word character is
           | nothing like the one in care.
        
             | jacobolus wrote:
             | This British pronunciation of hover https://dictionary.camb
             | ridge.org/pronunciation/english/hover does not sound at all
             | like the vowel in 'lot' or 'song'.
        
               | leoedin wrote:
               | I'm British, and sitting at my desk saying "hover" "lot"
               | "song" over and over again. They're definitely very
               | close. I say hover like hoh-ver, which is very similar to
               | the vowel I say in lot (loh-t) and song (soh-ng).
        
               | lucian1900 wrote:
               | Look up lot and song on the same website, it's the same
               | vowel. Then compare with lover, an entirely different
               | vowel is pronounced.
        
               | jacobolus wrote:
               | I _did_ look up lot and song at the same website. The
               | audio examples of British pronunciations provided for
               | those two words use an entirely different vowel sound.
        
               | [deleted]
        
               | spacedcowboy wrote:
               | Yes. It does. Source: have been British for 54 years
               | 
               | Hover is "hovver"
               | 
               | Lover is "luvver"
        
               | jacobolus wrote:
               | Did you listen to the audio file at the link? I take it
               | the British pronunciation at dictionary.cambridge.org is
               | an unrepresentative example?
        
               | teamonkey wrote:
               | No, that's correct and so is what they're saying
        
         | madeofpalk wrote:
         | It's funny because I wouldn't have thought twice about how to
         | pronounce it if it just never mentioned the rhyming thing, but
         | now I can't stop saying plover, hover, lover. Plover, hover,
         | lover.
         | 
         | I've never seen a title like "Redis (rhymes with "Candice") is
         | an in-memory..."
        
           | wongarsu wrote:
           | But you have probably noticed that close to nobody pronounces
           | debian correctly (deb-ian, like the names), or gif (whichever
           | is right), or PNG (ping), or the people pronouncing dogecoin
           | as dog-e-coin, etc.
           | 
           | Confusion about how to pronounce something is extremely
           | common, due to most open source communication happening in
           | written form, and English being a weird language where
           | pronunciation and spelling seem mostly unrelated to each
           | other.
        
             | 7952 wrote:
             | Maybe we need to have a latin/binomial nomenclature like in
             | species naming. So _pluvialis apricaria_ instead of golden
             | plover. _mensa elephantus_ for PostgreSQL. _mensa parvus_
             | for SQLite.
             | 
             | The purpose is to have an agreed name in all languages, and
             | not worry much about pronounciation. Now what about
             | Oracle...
        
               | arthurcolle wrote:
               | mensa diabolica?
        
               | chaosite wrote:
               | mensa pythia?
        
         | bdwjn wrote:
         | Just don't pronounce the P as a separate letter.
        
           | wyattpeak wrote:
           | I don't think that's the problem the clarification is
           | designed to address. A plover is a type of bird, and in some
           | accents it doesn't rhyme with either lover or hover.
           | 
           | Nevertheless, the parent is right, in my accent hover and
           | lover don't rhyme either. All three have different vowels.
        
             | dalmo3 wrote:
             | I think GP was alluding to the drug P (meth).
        
               | TotempaaltJ wrote:
               | A simpler explanation would be "pee-lover".
        
             | taejo wrote:
             | In my accent, lover, hover and clover have three different
             | vowels in the first syllable. Plover rhymes with lover for
             | me. Does it rhyme with clover for you?
        
               | wyattpeak wrote:
               | Yeah, it does.
               | 
               | I suspect it's not the standard pronunciation in my
               | region, since Wiktionary lists it as an alternative
               | American pronunciation and I'm Australian, but for
               | whatever reason that's how I pronounce it.
        
               | SamBam wrote:
               | I expect that many people pronounce "plover" as "clover"
               | if they saw it written down first before they heard
               | someone who knows the pronunciation say it. There are
               | plenty of words like that in English.
               | 
               | I pronounced it as rhyming with "clover" too before
               | learning that it's actually incorrect.
        
         | imron wrote:
         | And both options are different to how I first read it (rhymes
         | with clover).
        
           | SamBam wrote:
           | That's how I always pronounced the bird (rhyming with
           | clover), but looking it up now, it does actually rhyme with
           | "lover." It's just "lover" with a "p" in front.
           | 
           | (And it's the same for US vs British English, that is, they
           | can both use the rule "p + lover" and pronounce it correctly
           | respectively.)
           | 
           | "Hover" is more ambiguous, though. It can rhyme with "lover"
           | or have a rounder "o" sound.
        
         | arxanas wrote:
         | This is an oversight. We settled on "lover" a while ago for
         | this reason, it should be updated.
        
         | nawgz wrote:
         | Huh, I learn something new each day. I definitely would
         | consider these words to be "very" rhyming and can't even
         | envision which one mutates in other accents. Thanks!
        
         | whatever1 wrote:
         | Freaking English. Can't we revamp the dictionary to make the
         | alphabet truly phonetic? So many of the words have dubious
         | pronunciation. To the point that if you have just read a word
         | in a book, there is no guarantee that you can pronounce it.
        
           | Symmetry wrote:
           | Not while using an alphabet with just 5 vowel letters.
           | Switching to IPA would do the job, though.
        
             | TchoBeer wrote:
             | 5 vowels, and then 25 more vowel combinations (e.g. ea)
        
               | Symmetry wrote:
               | I don't think those 25 combinations are enough to cover
               | all the cases of unique vowel sounds, diphthongs, and
               | pairs of distinct adjacent vowels that you find in
               | English. 'ea' for instance is ambiguous between sounds
               | like those in 'great', 'deal', and 'creatine'.
        
           | resoluteteeth wrote:
           | That's impossible to some degree because English
           | pronunciation varies so much across dialects.
           | 
           | Or rather, you could make writing phonetic but then spelling
           | would have to vary by dialect.
        
             | hoseja wrote:
             | I just realized it's done precisely like that in my
             | language! Never even thought about it. But there is a
             | standard "written" version of the language and dialects are
             | mostly spoken.
        
               | wfawejoiweoif wrote:
               | please specify the language so people can learn things,
               | it's the internet
        
               | sdfjksbdf wrote:
               | Isn't that true for every language?
        
               | gliese1337 wrote:
               | Nope. Most languages have no written standard, and some
               | have more than one (E.g., American vs. British vs.
               | Australian English, or Nynorsk vs. Bokmal Norwegian).
        
           | tuvan wrote:
           | That's really hard with old languages. Accents and new words
           | surpass the alphabets with time. Turkish for example switched
           | to using Latin alphabet on 1928 and they were able to map
           | every sound to a specific letter. If you know the Turkish
           | alphabet song you can read every text with perfect
           | pronunciation. There aren't even any letter combinations to
           | consider, letters have one sound and are individual.
        
           | KineticLensman wrote:
           | In at least England, this would cause spelling to have
           | regional variations. E.g. 'bath' in southern English is often
           | pronounced as if was spelt 'barth' while in the North it
           | would be 'baf'.
        
           | DC-3 wrote:
           | The problem here is that a vowel is split in some dialects
           | but not others. Phonemic spelling would not solve this
           | problem.
        
       | yewenjie wrote:
       | How long does it usually take to learn stenography? If my regular
       | typing speed is about 75 wpm, what kind of wpm can I expect to
       | reach?
        
         | verytrivial wrote:
         | That's a very healthy qwerty pace. It would many months,
         | perhaps years, of daily practice before you exceed that. I've
         | been lurking in that community and unless you have A LOT of
         | prose to produce which can justify the up-front learning
         | investment, steno is IMHO best approached as neat hobby/game
         | that also happens to get you fast text input ... eventually.
         | Else you are in for a frustrating wait.
         | 
         | Oh, and to your question, _very good_ stenographers head off
         | into the stratosphere at 200wpm+ (elite in 300wpm+) for
         | extended periods, rates not really doable on qwerty except for
         | short burst of predictable prose IMO.
        
         | bambax wrote:
         | I think much slower than I can type, so for something where I'm
         | the author, typing speed has never been the limiting factor.
         | 
         | Yet the idea of being able to author something at 250 wpm is
         | utterly fascinating. A novel in around six hours...
        
           | mistercow wrote:
           | People often say things like "I think slower than I type",
           | but I don't think that this is correctly modeling the
           | problem, because it's only true over long timescales.
           | 
           | Consider this: the average American uses only 7 GB of mobile
           | data per month. Would they be happy with 50 kilobits per
           | second? That's much faster than their average usage rate, so
           | in some sense, the data rate wouldn't be the limiting factor.
           | 
           | It's very much the same with typing speed. Yes, your internal
           | word generation rate might be slower than you type if we're
           | looking at an hour by hour, or even minute by minute scale.
           | But once you have a thought crafted, it's beneficial to get
           | it out as quickly as possible.
        
         | Ballas wrote:
         | From what I have read, you can go to over 150 in 6 months. Of
         | course, it would depend on how much time you spend on it.
         | 
         | My biggest concern is that there seems to be no standard for
         | programming. I have seen some people develop their own cords,
         | but that seems like quite a time investment to me.
         | 
         | Another think that might be an issue is if you have to be able
         | to type in different languages. I guess you could adapt easily
         | enough as long as the language already has a chord-table, but
         | it also means more time learning.
        
           | dalmo3 wrote:
           | Intellisense for Typescript gives you a sort of stenography
           | with zero time investment. I barely type anything in full
           | except definitions or strings.
        
             | bbojan wrote:
             | Mapping dot and Enter to thumb keys on an ergonomic
             | keyboard does wonders in combination with this. I actually
             | have both mapped to the same key (in different layers).
             | 
             | If your IDE is good at predicting which class member you
             | will type, it can be lightning fast.
        
           | zozbot234 wrote:
           | > My biggest concern is that there seems to be no standard
           | for programming.
           | 
           | The standard would definitely have to vary by language, and
           | you would probably define custom strokes for each defined
           | symbol in the source, similar to the strokes for English
           | words in ordinary steno. It could be workable if the stroke
           | definitions could be stored with the original source code as
           | custom comments, and then imported by your stenotype tool.
        
         | suby wrote:
         | In the school I went to, 2 years was the expectation with
         | graduation requirements being 240 WPM with 98% accuracy.
         | 
         | How quickly you actually got there was very much dependent on
         | the person. Some do it quicker than 2 years with little
         | practice, some do it slower than 2 years with a lot of
         | practice, and some appeared to be unable to reach the
         | requirements at all.
         | 
         | I don't really remember too well at this point but it maybe
         | took me a few months to get to 30 - 40 WPM, maybe a year to get
         | to 120, and year and a half in total for 240.
         | 
         | I don't think it's practical or worth it for the vast majority
         | of people to learn stenography to be honest. That being said,
         | Plover is a nice and much needed initiative, I'm glad it
         | exists.
        
           | ChrisRR wrote:
           | What was this course? Was it a dedicated stenography course
           | or taught stenography as part of something else?
        
             | suby wrote:
             | It was at a small accredited school which offered associate
             | degrees in court reporting (also degrees in a handful of
             | other subjects such as accounting). I had to complete a few
             | other courses not strictly related to stenography, but the
             | degree itself was an associates degree in court reporting.
        
       | enriquto wrote:
       | nice colossal cave adventure reference!
        
       | chadlavi wrote:
       | Why do people make products with names that they know they have
       | to tell people how to pronounce? Why would you make marketing,
       | stickiness, word of mouth etc an uphill problem for yourself?
       | 
       | In my local accent "plover" has the same vowel as "over".
        
         | edm0nd wrote:
         | Probably because the people making the products are developers
         | and not concerned about or aware of such things.
        
           | pony_sheared wrote:
           | Developers, rhymes with interlopers
        
         | DrOctagon wrote:
         | Think Danny Glover and that's how most Australians would
         | pronounce it.
        
         | jonathankoren wrote:
         | I need to launch a product with an ambiguous pronunciation, and
         | then "helpfully" suggest a heteronym as a guide.
        
           | MaysonL wrote:
           | I heard three pronunciations of "Wacom" yesterday and I'm
           | still not sure if there's an official one and if so, which it
           | is (if it's not a fourth).
        
             | sombremesa wrote:
             | Not really a good comparison (if we're talking about
             | choosing a pronounceable name when incorporating) because
             | the pronunciation is not at all ambiguous* (wakomu) in the
             | original language, and the country it was founded in mostly
             | uses that language.
             | 
             | * - while the wakomu part is not ambiguous, you can
             | technically choose to pronounce the rest of the word (Zhu
             | Shi Hui She ) differently - since these characters have
             | multiple pronunciations - though choosing to do that would
             | be considered a very strange thing to do in this context,
             | since its otherwise got a standard pronunciation.
        
         | BitwiseFool wrote:
         | They have these birds called Plovers in California and that's
         | the pronunciation (puh-lover) I immediately went to.
         | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_golden_plover
        
           | [deleted]
        
         | turtlebits wrote:
         | There is a bird called a plover with the same pronunciation.
         | I'm guessing this product is named after it.
        
       | jwithington wrote:
       | "Check out this open-source project!"
       | 
       | HN: "OK, but how do you feel about dipthongs?"
        
       | jarmitage wrote:
       | Mirabai Knight's talk about this is one of my all time faves:
       | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wpv-Qb-dB6g
       | 
       | Inspired me to try to create a live coding musical instrument
       | based on it: https://github.com/jarmitage/stenophone /
       | https://iclc.toplap.org/2017/cameraReady/stenophone_camready...
        
       | wpietri wrote:
       | For those who just want to see what doing stenography is like,
       | there's a demo here that works with compatible keyboards:
       | http://www.openstenoproject.org/demo/
        
       | s_dev wrote:
       | When I hear Plover I think Mark Jason Dominus.
        
         | mjd wrote:
         | I offered the Open Steno folks a subdomain of plover.com, so
         | they could set up a redirect or something, but Mirabai said
         | they didn't need it.
        
       | nxpnsv wrote:
       | My keyboard is supported! Never tried stenography, so I hopped to
       | http://qwertysteno.com and tried the tutorial - it makes sense,
       | but has a steep learning curve - you certainly need a lot
       | practice more than the 5 minutes I gave it.
       | 
       | I wonder if something like this for programming rather than
       | writing is feasible, and if one then could code at the speed of
       | thought.
        
         | fouronnes3 wrote:
         | I mean, the speed of code is something like 10 lines per hour
         | for good code... Sometimes less or even negative so I'm pretty
         | sure the input method is not the bottleneck. That said I still
         | use Vi mode in vs code so maybe there is something to it.
        
           | bbojan wrote:
           | But to do that, you often have to navigate through thousands
           | of lines, and you use the keyboard for that, too.
        
             | [deleted]
        
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