Help the noob?
Jack Aviado
Background: Touch-types fine, never touched a steno machine or got
around to any of those other chording keyboards.
Consulting this: http://stenoknight.com/STPRRPTS.jpg and this:
http://stenoknight.com/plover/stenqwerty.png
While the conversion chart does help somewhat, especially after I
resolved my own issues with keyboard layout, I'm not quite getting
expected results.
ROE outputs row, but
ROES outputs rose not rows
and ROER outputs roar not rower
I understand dictionaries differ among stenographers but I'm unsure
where to define these terms or how to determine which way it should be
at all.
Please advise.
Thanks.
Jack Aviado
Found the user manual (wasn't there before) and will be looking into
editing the dictionary. Any input is appreciated though.
--
Jack Aviado
http://jack.is/
World revolution is happening NOW!
At ~29.78 km/s.
Stan Sakai
> ROES outputs rose not rows
> and ROER outputs roar not rower
program the keyboard in the way that you naturally interpret words but
it is still good to have a "native" theory -- a set of general rules
and principles from which you logically and systematically create a
phonetic/pneumonic system that works for you.
Plover's stock dictionary is based is the New York Court Reporting
Institute theory (though I think the official name of the school has
changed) -- which is based loosely on StenED. This is the one Mirabai
was taught in school. You can download a starter dictionary from
DigitalCat's website here: http://www.stenovations.com/StudentDownload.html.
Though Mirabai's explanation on general stroking principles on
Plover's site holds true for most theories, each theory is going to
have slightly different rules for vowel usage, word boundaries, and
inflected endings.
In my dictionary I have RO for row, ROS for rows, and RO/-ER for
rower. Rose for me is ROES and roar is RAOR. But I use a different
theory than Mirabai with completely different writing strategies. If
you don't know which theory to start off with, check the "Forum
Theory" section at depoman.com. But I would recommend importing and
studying an unmodified stock dictionary for learning purposes so that
you get a firm grasp on consistent rules so that you're not completely
guessing each time how something should be stroked out. Ctrl-F
families of words to see how the theory handles prefixes or suffixes:
dis-, de-, def-, dif-, int-, -ly, -ing, -d, -ie, -ies, -tion. That way
you can correctly deduce the steno strokes to words without having to
wonder if it's TKE/TEK/TIVE or if it's TKEKT/IF or if it's TKET/EK/
TIVE, etc. Your theory will have one consistent way to handle similar-
sounding words.
FYI, my native theory is a mixture of "Philadelphia/Pennsylvania
Clinic" and MagnumSteno. Let me know us know if you have any more
questions.
On Oct 17, 8:03 pm, Jack Aviado <vonu...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> Background: Touch-types fine, never touched a steno machine or got
> around to any of those other chording keyboards.
>
robb
for all those seemingly strange discrepancies, mostly to avoid
conflicting outlines.
Stan, those dictionaries I think are in a format that only digitalCat
can read. You can't read them in a text editor like the Plover
dictionary.
I've spent the last few days editing the Plover dictionary in Gedit, a
text editor for Ubuntu, and it's quite tedious and time consuming. If
you don't get it right Plover won't load. I think dictionary
maintenance is in the pipeline. Might be better to wait until then.
robb
Josh Lifton
formats, is indeed in the pipeline, probably in the release after next,
though that could change depending on who is working on it. I'm guessing
I'm about a week or two away from releasing the next version, after which
it will become easier for other coders to contribute.
Cheers,
Josh
Tony Wright
Stan, those dictionaries I think are in a format that only digitalCat
can read. You can't read them in a text editor like the Plover
dictionary.
You must have DigitalCat (the student version is now free) to do things with those dictionaries, but there is a way to convert them to .rtf files and back again. If anyone is interested I can show you how.
--Tony
Stan Sakai
changed file extension.
Nonetheless, I just emailed Stenovations saying that I'm a steno
student (they didn't require documentation) and they sent me a working
serial code within the hour.
If anything I think you can launch 'Dictionary Maintenance' without
one if just install the unactivated student copy. This is how I
started learning my theory without investing in any literature.
On Oct 18, 8:05 am, Tony Wright <tony.a.wri...@gmail.com> wrote:
Josh Lifton
The latest experimental release of Plover (version 2.0.0.4) includes a
graphical user interface for viewing and editing all Plover configuration
parameters. This will hopefully make Plover configuration much easier and
less error prone. Aside from the known-to-be-buggy support for the Gemini
TX stenotype, everything in this experimental release should work as
advertised. If it doesn't, please let me know or, better yet, file a bug
report directly in Launchpad. As usual, this release can be downloaded
from:
https://launchpad.net/plover/+download
Feedback is greatly appreciated.
Cheers,
Josh
Josh Lifton
http://www.computerworld.com.au/article/364086/augen_tablet_will_dual-boot_ubuntu_android/?rid=-219
robb
> Nonetheless, I just emailed Stenovations saying that I'm a steno
> student (they didn't require documentation) and they sent me a working
> serial code within the hour.
I'm curious. What did they send you a serial code for?
Surely not for their Transcript Editor and the other software. I
don't know how much it is but surely that's what people pay the big $
for.
Josh,
I'm pleased to say that that 2.0.0.4 is working fine on my machine.
Would it be possible sometime in the next few releases to add a hot
key to toggle Plover's pause/resume, would be really handy when
working on the dictionary.
I'm a bit confused with the dictionary configuration. There are two
formats available Eclipse and DCAT, which I assume is digitalCat. I
downloaded a few dictionaries from the digitalCat link Stan supplied
in his post, but Plover still looks for files with the .json
extension. I might be jumping the gun here :).
Have been so busy playing with Plover and the X4 that I haven't had
time to create a Stentura file yet. Hopefully this weekend.
robb
Tony Wright
Stan,
I'm curious. What did they send you a serial code for?
Surely not for their Transcript Editor and the other software. I
don't know how much it is but surely that's what people pay the big $
for.
The Transcript Editor prints out pages with a "Student Version" watermark, and you can't copy and paste from it. However, Catnip, a utility which allows you to write steno to any Windows program, works just fine. The Dictionary Maintenance program also works just fine, with no limitations of functionality that I could see.
--Tony
Josh Lifton
Thanks for checking, Rob!
> Would it be possible sometime in the next few releases to add a hot
> key to toggle Plover's pause/resume, would be really handy when
> working on the dictionary.
Yes, command sequences, such as ALT-TAB, will be coming in the next
release. Pause/resume toggle will be built on top of that and may appear
in the next release as well, or maybe the one after. Dictionary
maintenance tools are on the to-do list, but haven't yet been detailed or
scheduled. Input from Plover's users goes a long way in determining which
features I work on, so keep it coming.
> I'm a bit confused with the dictionary configuration. There are two
> formats available Eclipse and DCAT, which I assume is digitalCat. I
> downloaded a few dictionaries from the digitalCat link Stan supplied
> in his post, but Plover still looks for files with the .json
> extension.
Yes, this is confusing, mostly due to my lack of familiarity with steno
dictionary formats. DCAT does refer to digitalCAT. However, both Eclipse
and DCAT refer only to the formatting of the strokes, not to the actual
file format. Part of the goal of Plover is to move away from closed file
and data formats and to instead use open standards, such as JSON.
Eventually, there will be helper scripts that will automate the conversion
of proprietary dictionary formats to the format Plover uses. Now that I'm
thinking about it, I don't see see why Plover needs to support more than
one dictionary format at all -- what do people think of getting rid of the
dictionary format configuration parameter and instead decide on a single
open format for which conversion scripts will be provided?
> Have been so busy playing with Plover and the X4 that I haven't had
> time to create a Stentura file yet. Hopefully this weekend.
Great, looking forward to it.
Cheers,
Josh
Arthaey Angosii
> I don't see see why Plover needs to support more than one dictionary format
> at all -- what do people think of getting rid of the dictionary format
> configuration parameter and instead decide on a single open format for which
> conversion scripts will be provided?
So long as you make it easy to convert-on-import when loading a
different dictionary format, I don't see a problem with Plover using
only its own format.
--
Arthaey
Stan Sakai
timer that counted down from 130 days, I believe). I sent Stenovations
an email with the serial number provided by the program in its "please
register to unlock" dialog and they responded with the corresponding
unlock code. This is the CAT program I began to learn realtime with
(other than Plover, of course). So as Tony said, it is free if you are
a student, but you have to keep checking in every hundred and
something days to verify that you're still a student and obtain a new
unlock code.
On Oct 19, 5:37 am, Tony Wright <tony.a.wri...@gmail.com> wrote:
Stan Sakai
steno
dictionary formats. DCAT does refer to digitalCAT. However, both
Eclipse
and DCAT refer only to the formatting of the strokes, not to the
actual
file format. Part of the goal of Plover is to move away from closed
file
and data formats and to instead use open standards, such as JSON.
Eventually, there will be helper scripts that will automate the
conversion
of proprietary dictionary formats to the format Plover uses. Now that
I'm
thinking about it, I don't see see why Plover needs to support more
than
one dictionary format at all -- what do people think of getting rid of
the
dictionary format configuration parameter and instead decide on a
single
open format for which conversion scripts will be provided? "
RTF/CRE format is what one would normally convert his or her
dictionary file to when one wants to switch CAT applications. For
example, when I switched from DC to CaseCATalyst, I had to export my
DC-formatted file into this ASCII format and then I imported that into
CC which then in turn, converts that into its native dictionary format
*.SGDICT. CC and DC dictionary maintenance both allow you to export to
RTF dictionary files.
I don't know if this is what you mean by "open standard" but from what
I understand, this file type would probably be ideal for Plover to
support (since most other CAT software supports its export and its
use).
Josh Lifton
Eclipse formats, it means that it supports the variants of the RTF/CRE
format that DCAT and Eclipse use. That is to say, there isn't a completely
standard RTF/CRE format to which every dictionary exports; there is some
variation in where hyphens are used and such. Mirabai, do I have that
right?
Mirabai Knight, CCP
there are a lot of inconsistencies between CAT programs in terms of
how it's utilized. The dictionary that ships with Plover (my own steno
dictionary as of last winter) was exported from Eclipse into rtf/cre
format, then dinked around with in multiple ways until it was in
Python dictionary format, which Josh then converted into .json format.
The reason why there's both an Eclipse setting and a DigitalCAT
setting in Plover (though I agree with Josh that this is probably best
handled in future conversion scripts rather than staying two separate
formats) is to do with hyphen handling by Eclipse versus DigitalCAT. I
don't remember the exact details now because it's been a while since
Josh and I wrote the code that handled each implementation of the
supposedly universal rtf/cre format, but I think it's something like
DigitalCAT putting a hyphen in every stroke no matter what, but
Eclipse only doing it under certain conditions involving vowels and
other weird minutiae. Anyway, we've written the code to handle it; it
should just be a matter of putting it into the dictionary conversion
script that turns rtf/cre (exported by whichever CAT program) into
.json format. I'll try to put this together over the next week or two
and then send it to Josh for the coding side of things.
Mirabai Knight, CCP
nutshell. RTF/CRE ain't as universal as it's cracked up to be.
Stan Sakai
> can read. You can't read them in a text editor like the Plover
> dictionary.
> I've spent the last few days editing the Plover dictionary in Gedit, a
> text editor for Ubuntu, and it's quite tedious and time consuming. If
> you don't get it right Plover won't load. I think dictionary
> maintenance is in the pipeline. Might be better to wait until then.
>
> robb
file name and type of the DC dictionary to dictionaries.py or
something that placed it in the main Plover directory. Hm. I'll
investigate that tonight hopefully.
As far as dictionary maintenance goes, good thing we have to GUI for
it now (though I haven't tested it) I couldn't imagine editing my
steno strokes textually while also keeping formatting syntax in mind.
I add around 50-250 new dictionary entries in one day and I delete
probably around 20 a day (the ones that came stock that I never use
and will never use). My stock dictionary started somewhere around 40k
entries a few months ago when I started. I'm already pushing 79k+
entries.
Stan Sakai
> nutshell. RTF/CRE ain't as universal as it's cracked up to be.
>
make the formatting work in CC.
When I first imported my dictionary, I couldn't write punctuation,
delete spaces, or anything except write words, really.
then I got weird crap like "mis<DELETE?SPACE>understood" during
realtime.
Makes sense.
On Oct 19, 2:48 pm, "Mirabai Knight, CCP" <askelad...@gmail.com>
wrote:
Mirabai Knight, CCP
Eclipse and each time I had to mess with tons of entries to make them
work properly. Pretty obnoxious, to the point where most commercial
CAT software offers as a bonus for purchase having one of their techs
give you "free dictionary conversion" from your old dictionary to the
new one that works with the software you're buying. Some bonus, huh?
On Tue, Oct 19, 2010 at 5:53 PM, Stan Sakai <stan...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Heh, I was too slow. But yep, Josh, you put it very nicely in a
>> nutshell. RTF/CRE ain't as universal as it's cracked up to be.
>>
>
> Ah ok, that explains why I still had to modify a ton of entries to
> make the formatting work in CC.
> When I first imported my dictionary, I couldn't write punctuation,
> delete spaces, or anything except write words, really.
> then I got weird crap like "mis<DELETE?SPACE>understood" during
> realtime.
>
> Makes sense.
>
> On Oct 19, 2:48 pm, "Mirabai Knight, CCP" <askelad...@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>> Heh, I was too slow. But yep, Josh, you put it very nicely in a
>> nutshell. RTF/CRE ain't as universal as it's cracked up to be.
>>
>>
>>
>> On Tue, Oct 19, 2010 at 5:47 PM, Josh Lifton <lif...@media.mit.edu> wrote:
>> > Ah, I think I remember now. When Plover says it supports both DCAT and
>> > Eclipse formats, it means that it supports the variants of the RTF/CRE
>> > format that DCAT and Eclipse use. That is to say, there isn't a completely
>> > standard RTF/CRE format to which every dictionary exports; there is some
>> > variation in where hyphens are used and such. Mirabai, do I have that right?
--
Mirabai Knight, CCP
917 576 4989
m...@stenoknight.com
http://stenoknight.com
Stan Sakai
and StenED dictionaries on floppy disks. Btw who the hell still uses
floppy disks anymore?!
I actually save the ones I have as relics. I used to have brightly-
colored neon ones I used in middle school lols.
On Oct 19, 2:56 pm, "Mirabai Knight, CCP" <askelad...@gmail.com>
wrote:
Josh Lifton
supporting multiple variations of the RTF/CRE dictionary format, I plan on
moving Plover to a single format. At the moment, I'm leaning toward the
Eclipse format because it is more concise and easier to read; there is
exactly one hyphen separating righthand keys from lefthand keys, or no
hyphen if there are only righthand keys.
Any strong preferences out there? Anything I didn't take into account but
should?
Thanks,
Josh
Sonja Elen Kisa
Sonja
robb
within itself really matters too much. But as Sonja said as long as it
can retain as much of the RTF/CRE information when converting other
dictionary formats.
I've tried editing the .json in a text editor and it's no fun. So no
matter what format Plover uses, if there is a front-end management
part of Plover for editing the file easily I don't think it will
matter.
I've currently got a 2 month trial student version of a commercial
program and I'm building my dictionary in it. What would be really
useful would be to then import that dictionary into Plover, via RTF/
CRE export in the commercial software, retaining as much of the
'information' as possible.
Rob
Josh Lifton
.json - it took about 30 seconds for Plover to start up due to reading in
the .yaml file. I agree that leaving comments in the dictionary would be
useful, but I think load time is a higher priority. That said, I'll keep
my eyes open for other solutions that might allow comments.
Thanks for the feedback,
Josh
Josh Lifton
> information when converting other dictionary formats.
Aside from an ordered list of strokes, their corresponding English
translation, and a comment, what other information is there to preserve?
Date and time of addition to the dictionary?
> I've tried editing the .json in a text editor and it's no fun. So no
> matter what format Plover uses, if there is a front-end management
> part of Plover for editing the file easily I don't think it will
> matter.
This is a slated feature, though it may be a while before it's ready. It
would be great to start collecting a list of requirements this feature
should fulfill.
> What would be really useful would be to then import that dictionary into
> Plover, via RTF/ CRE export in the commercial software, retaining as
> much of the 'information' as possible.
Yes, this is important. Plover support for dictionary conversion is more
likely to come before Plover dictionary management tools.
Thanks,
Josh
robb
> Aside from an ordered list of strokes, their corresponding English
> translation, and a comment, what other information is there to preserve?
> Date and time of addition to the dictionary?
>
started playing with Case catalyst with a dictionary that I got from
work (court reporters). The dictionary has a lot of stuff as well as
the outlines and their translations which I suppose are as much a
function of the software as much as the dictionary itself. Most of
extra stuff seems to be formatting commands. Things like capping x
number of previous words, commands for formatting numbers etc. I
don't suppose they're essential in the translation process, just extra
stuff to make life easier for the professionals and to justify the
price they charge. If they couldn't be used by Plover they could be
ignored in the conversion process.
>
> > What would be really useful would be to then import that dictionary into
> > Plover, via RTF/ CRE export in the commercial software, retaining as
> > much of the 'information' as possible.
>
> Yes, this is important. Plover support for dictionary conversion is more
> likely to come before Plover dictionary management tools.
backed up in RTF/CTE format.
Rob