Getting started with Plover/Splitography on a Mac

[Dee R.]

Anyone have advice on this setup, please?

I am brand new to steno and I’ve recently downloaded Plover and a Splitography to learn and practice. I’m using it on a Mac. When I open Plover, I don’t get a Plover stroke display screen.  I only get the little mini screen. I’ve looked over all the menu options and the open steno website and I can’t figure out how to get it to open.

Question number two.  I’m using Pages on the mac as a word processor, under the assumption that it doesn’t really matter what I choose to write in.  When I type on the steno keyboard, it types entire words for some keys and nothing at all for others.  I thought I’d configured it correctly, according the the Splitography guide, but it’s hard to tell (without a Plover stroke display to compare it to) whether Pages is recognizing it as a ‘steno’ keyboard or if it’s gone haywire somehow.  

I am really as brand new as can be and have no background in steno, so the plainest of English would be helpful.  Thanks to all of you giving advice.  I've attached a screenshot of the windows and menu options that I see when I open Plover.  As far as I can tell, these are the only options.

Thanks,

Dee

[Glen Warner]

Hi, Dee.

Welcome to "The Ploververse!"

Plover requires you to have another program open for your strokes to appear, which is what happened when you had Pages open.

Plover also comes with a built-in dictionary, which is why some keys produced a letter or two, while others produced a word.

Fortunately, there are lessons available here:

https://sites.google.com/site/ploverdoc/home

You might also want to take a look at this article. While it is geared more towards people that started out with steno school, it should teach you something, like how to add your own dictionary to Plover for outlines you either find or come up with, or outlines discussed in those lessons ... not to mention the plugins.

So.  Once you've read through that article and have a fairly good idea of what Plover can do, go back to that first link and start learning stuff ... and soon, you'll want to try some of the games!

Good luck!

--gdw 

[Dee R.]

Thanks Glen