Plover Proposal: Option to return Qwerty values for all non-chorded keystrokes in keyboard mode.

[cev...@gmail.com]

Proposal: Option to return Qwerty values for all non chorded keystrokes in NKRO keyboard mode.

Before posting (after getting over myself and realizing is was probably not a new idea) I looked around and saw a similar suggestion called Plover-Lite. Still I'd like to think I'm bringing a new perspective to the table. Or at least reminding people the idea exists.

Either way I'd probably have called it Qwerty-Steno, but that is already taken, isn't it? Maybe Steno-ANSI? I know, how about Ploverty?

Ouch! HEY! Stop throwing things! Ok, ok, I get it, the name needs work. 

Anyways, here is the quick and dirty "I don't have enough credit in this group yet to afford being long winded" proposal.

Concept:

- Any Non-chorded key returns its Qwerty values. Chorded keys return Steno values. Example: A=A, where as AP= S-T= is the.

- Any key chorded with space returns its Steno value. The space would be recognized as a keypress but without value. Example: [Space]=[Space} A=A, A[Space]=S= is.

-... put an extra * on B. (for [Space]* on the thumb)

Advantages: 

-No more toggling Plover on and off. Leave it running full time.

-Ease into Steno by mixing it into your regular keyboard usage.

-Use the full keyboard for faster finger-spelling.

-Find new uses for previously unavailable chords!

Disadvantages:

-All Single keypress strokes now require [Space] as a second key.

-Qwerty typing will likely be slower due to letters being typed on the upstroke instead of the down stroke. High possibility for accidental chords with fast typists.

-Probably requires revision of arpeggiation mode.

How to do it:

Ok I only have a very basic concept of how Plover works, (and I'm no programmer) so this is merely an uneducated guess.

1) Add the rest of the keyboard (except Ctrl, Alt, Shift, ESC) to Plover watch list.

2) Tweak Plover to bypass/send the Qwerty value for any keystroke that ends with fewer than than two concurrent keypresses.

3) ...

4) Profit!

(OR add the rest of the keyboard to Plover (except...) watch list, then create a modified dictionary to handle conversions. Including a duplicate for every entry in the dictionary including space. First option sounds easier to me, but again I'm no programmer)

Ideally this would all be layout independent. So if your system was set to Dvorak, Plover would send the appropriate Dvorak values... but let's not get ahead of ourselves.

[Daniel Langlois]

I'm gonna criticize this idea, though not on the grounds of its feasibility--I imagine that it's probably *possible*. But your list of advantages, is here:

-No more toggling Plover on and off. Leave it running full time.

-Ease into Steno by mixing it into your regular keyboard usage.

-Use the full keyboard for faster finger-spelling.

-Find new uses for previously unavailable chords! in it approximate had

Working backwards, I don't see a need for previously unavailable chords. BTW, these chords were previously unavailable, because we weren't using the space bar, right? That's how I boil your suggestion down, you're saying that the steno keyboard could use a dead key--and we conveniently have one, on our qwerty keyboard, the spacebar. 

I don't anticipate faster finger-spelling. A*/H*/R*/S*/T* this is an example of fingerspelling. It's combining a letter with a dead key. But that's exactly what you are doing, only you prefer the spacebar, to the asterisk. You might point out, that you're using the entire QWERTY keyboard, the whole alphabet, so, for example, 'L' is 'L', and not 'HR' for 'L', along with 'TPH' for 'N', etc. That is, you're not hitting as many keys simultaneously, it's less work this way. However, how much less work is it? Is hitting keys simultaneously, an *issue*? When you write steno, you're generally hitting keys simultaneously, every time, every stroke. Do we mind? It seems to me, that one buys into the idea of chords, or rejects steno entirely, do you picture a third way, of trying to minimize the chords from steno? Use a QWERTY keyboard and there are no chords, if you mind chords. In steno, you're up to your gills in chords. And I don't take this to be an issue. 

What about easing into steno, by mixing it into your regular keyboard usage. To me, this sounds confusing, too much overlap between the two paradigms. I like the idea of a gentler learning curve, I can understand exploring the question, must we abandon our established habits, cold turkey? And climb this sheer vertical wall of a learning curve to do steno? But, I do, in a way, myself, totally, ideologically abandon the QWERTY keyboard. The keyboard used to do steno, is a steno keyboard. That's the keyboard. If you use a qwerty keyboard, then your qwerty keboard is a wanna-be steno keyboard. Those extra keys, are to be ignored, they are now just in the way, it's an inconvenience that they even exist. The steno keyboard has the steno keys. And a steno keyboard does not label the keys, the 'a' key, the 'b' key, there are no labels. Your qwerty keyboard does have labels, but this is graffiti, your keyboard has been defaced, which is entirely regrettable. My comportment, is this. But is this attitude necessary? Is it the only alternative? Yes, I actually think that it is, that this dogmatism is well-advised. The idea is to join the steno community. If we lose that idea, then we lose a major selling point of steno, that it can be done on a steno keyboard, and thousands are doing it, at 200wpm. It exists. If you're going to ease into steno, then have it be actual steno that you ease into (is how it seems to me). 

Extra keys that don't exist on a steno keyboard are, in my eyes, not to be used. There may still be debate in this, in your eyes, but I'd encourage you to picture the keyboard that way. it's not a QWERTY keyboard. It's a steno keyboard. It's not a happy marriage between the two, opposites attract, chocolate/peanut butter qwerty/steno.  It's steno. It's not fingerspelling everything, anymore, and it's not having umpteen keys, anymore. 

You also suggest that we could avoid toggling Plover on and off, could leave it running full time. That is, if we want to revert to qwerty, we just type normally. But all the chords also work. I get this, as appealing if you think you can manage some 50%, maybe 70, of words using steno, but when you're stumped you want to fingerspell. So, 'the q-u-i-c-k brown fox j-u-m-p-e-d over the lazy dog'. right? And, when you fingerspell, you revert to qwerty. Well, I'm not, I guess, really offering another argument against this, but I picture the schoolmaster in Pink Floyd The Wall, if he were hovering over you. Then, when you go to QWERTY out a word, he could rap your knuckles with a RULER, and growl 'the boy fancies himself! A POET!' QWERTY is evil. 

My suspicion is that this is in fact the only way to learn steno. You can set out to prove me wrong, but you will have no successors, even if you do. I'd bet money. 

[Mike Neale]

Hi OP.

I'd definitely agree with Daniel. The fact that some of us are using QWERTY keyboards is arbitrary. When we turn Plover on, we are using a steno keyboard. We might hope to one day graduate to a real steno machine and then we won't have any other keys such as the spacebar etc..

As Daniel so beautifully puts it: "Your qwerty keyboard does have labels, but this is graffiti, your keyboard has been defaced"

One of the points you made as a Disadvantage was: "High possibility for accidental chords with fast typists."

I have to say this downside is huge. I tried something similar to this recently and I found that when typing at anything above 20wpm in a natural way, EVERY key overlaps with the next. Although it may seem that we press each key sequentially, we really don't. We flow from one key into the next.

The last point I want to make is that fingerspelling is really the last resort for a stenographer. If we don't have the word in our dictionary (which we almost certainly do), we then have a number of other options to output the word we want. If we finally decide we HAVE to fingerspell it, it should only be done ONCE. That is when you are adding it to your dictionary. From then you have a steno entry for that word and should never need to fingerspell it again.

If the steno learning curve seems a bit steep, don't worry, if you give yourself a couple of weeks of learning and playing with it, you will almost certainly be able to spell 90% of all words using pure steno.

Check out QwertySteno.com for some tutorials to get you started.

-Mike-

[Brent Nesbitt]

I might suggest that keys like the arrows and home/end etc (ie non-letter keys) may be  more useful in the qwerty paradigm - especially since you often wasn't too use those one handed -ie. With the mouse.
Or I suppose defining single handed chords for those would be another option.

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[cev...@gmail.com]

Oh good, disagreements! Well, no, thats actually not good. But they are polite and logical. Honestly, that is pretty awesome.

*picks up sword and shield*

-Space as replacement for * (Fingerspelling)

Now, most importantly, I in no way shape or form suggested getting Qwerty values with inclusion of the space bar. I do realize how similar this would be to Fingerspelling. What I suggested was much the opposite in fact. What I suggested was an option that would return single keypress keystrokes with Qwerty values, like normal typing, while single keypress Steno keystrokes would require the spacebar. That is all of, what, 20-ish entries of the whole steno dictionary that would be effected? Granted 20 of the most frequent, but still.

That my intent was misunderstood means I was not clear enough. Input to help fix that would be appreciated.

-Unavailable Chords

I could have expanded the unavailable chords, but I wanted to be brief. I do realize there are plenty of unused chords. What I would see as an advantage is that as an example, the qwerty z could be used exclusively in system functions or navigation. Since there is no precident for a qwerty z, there are no pre-existing chords, so they can be relatively short.

-Fingerspelling (Part 2)

www.kutesy-websyte-you-will-never-use-again,com 

or

refObscureFunctionCallGibberish

or

NotASpamBot47LetMePost

Sure you can do it. And once you have it in your dictionary, sure it will be a lot faster. But I'd bet most would just toggle Plover for that one. Or when typing passwords. If non-chorded keystrokes are ignored, I don't really see the need to toggle.

-Qwerty Speed

I was surprized this was so far down the list. I considered this to be rather low impact on the Steno side of things, so I expected this to be the first concern. On the other hand, this is the only concern I have absolutely no defense for. Actually one of two. Typing is taught downwards, so people who used this option would also need to train their upstroke. (Which I imagine you would need to do at the high levels of steno too)

-Learning

... yeah, cold turkey is probably the only way to go. No argument there. I do remember reading a post on the Plover blog about how transcribing was easier on Qwerty till Steno speeds were brought up to 180wpm. Not that this would help with that, due to the aforementioned speed issue.

-QwertySteno

Yes, I know about it. Yes, I am working on it. And on several other of the options listed at the wiki.

-Steno Keyboard

I'm not sure I see the advantage of abandoning the mechanical typewriter based keyboard (standardized roughly 1910) entirely for the mechanical Steno based keyboard (standardized roughly 1913). I'm not saying they complement each other, just that it seems silly to not use keys that are already there. For instance, emulating the number bar instead of just using the number keys.

[Hesky Fisher]

Let me propose an alternative in the following steps:

1) Already on my todo list is to allow mapping the keyboard keys to any steno keys so that people can decide how they which keyboard key should map to which steno key.

2) Some steno machines have additional keys. There have been some requests to support them. I can't say that I've considered it high priority because it is a somewhat invasive feature (because it will require figuring out how to represent these extra keys in the outlines, which is not trivial). But, let's say that this ability is added.

3) Allow adding extra steno keys to the keyboard machine just like those other machines have them.

4) Using the above three and your dictionary you can map each key to "itself" while mapping multi key chords to whatever else you want.

I prefer this proposal because the required steps are generally useful for steno, which is the Plover's purpose without creating more special cases that will only serve a small set of users.

--

[cev...@gmail.com]

[Sorry, problem with last post. Deleted, fixed (I hope), reposted.]

*blink*... well, wow... I wasn't really expecting anyone to take this that seriously. I figured the basic "no-chord=qwerty" part was a cheap hopefully unintimidating looking work around that wouldn't require too much tinkering inside Plover  (apologies to programmers everywhere. Again, I know Nuzzink!) . If I was lucky, someone might have found it interesting enough to say they'd give it a crack, but not follow through, maybe a couple 'interesting idea' , or 'someone else already suggested this, but, you know, better' comments. Probably a whole lot of things that could be summarized as 'you idiot'.

So, you know, a toss around idea.

But actually taking it seriously enough to offer a proposal for how it could be done with planned features... color me impressed.

Speaking of those features, yeah, that would cover just about everything (and be awesome). Including keyboard widening, and Plover support for non qwerty keyboard layouts (possibly other non keyboard inputs even) unless I'm missing the mark. Adding support for extra keys in the outline was something I had dismissed as too scary to think about but is, being a full and proper steno program after all,  an unfortunate necessity. 

In short, if I had bothered to look for a Plover to-do list before posting, I might have saved you all the trouble of correcting me. Oops. Sorry!

[PS: Well, offering a reasonalbe, if distant, solution is also a good way to shut people up... meh, I'll take it.]

[Mike Neale]

By the way cev... (sorry, I don't know your name)

Although I would recommend using {PLOVER:TOGGLE} mapped to a steno stroke for turning Plover on and off there is a way of typing qwerty without toggling Plover.

Turn Plover on, then turn caps lock on. Steno as normal until you want to type something in qwerty, now hold down one of the shift keys and type in qwerty. When you're done, simply release shift and continue stenoing.

This works on my system (Windows 7), not sure about others. I would still recommending using a steno stroke to toggle plover though. Mine is "plv" (as in "Plover") on the qwerty keys which corresponds to "OGT" in steno.

"OGT": "{PLOVER:TOGGLE}"

[cev...@gmail.com]

Thanks so much for that Capslock-Shift Tip, Mike! Works like a charm. I feel a little silly for not figuring it out myself when I was testing how Plover interacted with the function keys.

The reason I find shifting preferable to toggling is experience with learning other keyboard layouts. It is far too easy to toggle the new layout off when you need speed or comfort... and delay, forget or 'forget' to toggle it back on.