What free workarounds?... , free kludges?... are there for getting a bit of the content of this .sgstn stenographic stenonote record of the public meeting of Boston City Council.

[don warner saklad]

What free workarounds?... , ? free kludges http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kludge are there for getting a bit of the content of this .sgstn stenographic stenonote record of the public meeting of Boston City Council. While Boston City Council makes available the public record .sgstn as is, they don't decode it !

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Sent-From: Braga, Ann Hess <Ann....@cityofboston.gov>
Date: Thu, Jun 7, 2012 at 11:38 AM
Subject: Stenographic file for this week's meeting

Good morning –

 

Attached please find the stenographic file from this week’s meeting.

 

Ann H. Braga, Esq. MPA, Staff Director

city.council at cityofboston.gov

Boston City Council

Boston City Hall, 5th Floor

One City Hall Square

Boston, MA 02201

 

Office (617) 635-3625

Fax (617) 635-4203

Cell (617) 828-3170

Web: http://cityofboston.gov/citycouncil

Have a great day!

cc06062012.sgstn
93K

cc06062012.sgstn public record also available

via

don.saklad at gmail.com

[Thomas Thurman]

On Tuesday, 12 June 2012 08:06:14 UTC+1, theszak wrote:

What free workarounds?... , ? free kludges http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kludge are there for getting a bit of the content of this .sgstn stenographic stenonote record of the public meeting of Boston City Council. While Boston City Council makes available the public record .sgstn as is, they don't decode it !

I looked around and was rather surprised not to be able to find documentation of the .sgstn format online. Therefore, I downloaded your file and dissected it, and wrote a script according to my hypotheses. That script is attached. When given your file, it produces

mad clerk {,} id {^'} like to rec {^nize} rob cons cons tit for purposes {^s} F {a^} presents {^tation} FPLT FPLT STKPWHR STKPWHRFRPBLGTS cons cons {extra^} thing you PHRPT FPLT its {^'} {a^} grade hon nor for me {^ed to} HAOEB here {^ed to} with peoples an prince pal from chit tick school in hide park FPLT for grate boss ton pub public SKAOLTS low {^cate} Ted in hide park {a^} reel gem {a^} sit {^}troke hid den gem in our sis TEPL an neighbor hood an one F my favor rat place {^s} {^ing to} is to talk to the kids on {^}troke {^or} fund grate G auction {un^} counsel con con an I went to the auction

This confirms my guesses about the format, but clearly the script needs a bit of polishing. I'm rather busy, so if anyone here fancies doing that polishing, they're very welcome to; otherwise I expect i shall get to it eventually.

Peace,

T

[Mirabai Knight]

Yeah, the main problem here is obviously that we don't have the
dictionary of the stenographer who made the transcript, so any of
their briefs or non-phonetic words (or any phonetic words that operate
according to a different theory from the one used by Plover) will be
impossible to translate except by guessing.

[Jeremy Kahn]

Ha! Thomas, your decoding reads like low-grade speech recognition output (a subject with which I have some familiarity). You can make sense of parts by reading it aloud ("peoples an prince pal from chit tick school").

Does Boston really publish sunshine transcripts in a closed-source, opaque format? "unclear on the concept" of sunshine transcript, I'd say.

[theszak]

Step by step how do you get this much with the .sgstn ?...

On Jun 12, 11:57 am, Thomas Thurman <marna...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tuesday, 12 June 2012 08:06:14 UTC+1, theszak wrote:
>
> > What free workarounds?... , ? free kludges

> >http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kludgeare there for getting a bit of the

>  boston-decode.tar.gz
> 113KViewDownload

[Mauricio]

Hi theszak

There is a text file called notes.txt in the compressed file boston-
decode.tar.gz that was attached by Thomas in his reply.
It gives an interesting description of his investigation and thought
process.

Mau

On Jun 13, 9:07 pm, theszak <don.sak...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Step by step how do you get this much with the .sgstn ?...
>
> On Jun 12, 11:57 am, Thomas Thurman <marna...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> > On Tuesday, 12 June 2012 08:06:14 UTC+1, theszak wrote:
>
> > > What free workarounds?... , ? free kludges

> > >http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kludgearethere for getting a bit of the

[Thomas Thurman]

On 14 June 2012 04:07, theszak <don.s...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Step by step how do you get this much with the .sgstn ?...

In the file boston-decode.tar.gz you will find a Python script named
dump-records.py. If you run this script, it will read in the .sgstn
fiile and print what it finds to standard output.

T

[Thomas Thurman]

I should have added: also in that archive is a file "first-pass.txt"
which contains the output of that Python script given the provided
.sgstn file and Plover's standard dictionary; this should save you
having to run the script yourself. I've attached that file here.

T

[theszak]

Thank you!