Are chord "rules" really that important?

[Nomen Nescio]

I'm quite new to steno, but I'm considering putting together my own theory. 

I take some influences from Jackdaw and Dothan Shelton (https://patents.google.com/patent/US3970185). The thing I find interesting in the patent is that he not only put forward rules on how chords are formed, he actually tabulated (some of) all combos available with each hands fingers.

What I wonder is if using rules are required at all? Or if it's feasible to use such tables instead and assign finger combos to fragments (without relying on rules).

What I mean by rules is that a chord has meaning derived from the values of each key in the chord (including assignment assignments to combos to achieve letters not present on the keyboard).

Example from plover theory is SKP- producing "and" which doesn't make any sense actually, but rather is a key pattern that the user have learnt to use to produce "and".

My thinking is that with training the chords becomes just pattern that correspond to output that you've learnt to use without anymore thinking about the rules that explained the mapping in the first place.

I

[Glen Warner]

I don't think that you need to come up with your own theory, but I'm pretty sure you could get away with just creating your own personal dictionary, and adding any outlines that don't conflict with your main theory dictionary.

 Good luck!