Palantype System

[Jack Chidley]

As you have seen from a previous post, I have been experimenting with machine stenography.  I have been struggling with briefs.  This just doesn't work for me.  So I looked at alternatives and Palantype seemed like it would be interesting.

Of course I can't find, and I don't wish to pay for, a original Palantype machine.  I don't think that anyone makes these anymore. 

So I build my own from a 40% 4x4x4x4 based keyboard and wrote my own (Gemini PR based) protocol for an Arduino. After a slight modification to the Plover source and adding Plover-Palantype I now have a working Palantype system!  Clearly, there are several unused keys and it is only a prototype but still...

I haven't worked it out exactly but I am pretty sure that it cost me less than £50 / $75 all in.  I am lucky because the British Library is a short trip away and I have begun to study an original Palantype training manual published by *The London School of Stenotyping* - I am using a first edition that dates from 1947.

Jack

[Ted Morin]

Very nice looking setup.

Wanted to chime in about briefs...some students in court reporting school lament on Facebook about not learning briefs until a year in because they feared them. And it's true that they're not that intuitive at the beginning.

But both stenographers and Palantypists tend to use a great deal or them in order to be fast.

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[Max H]

Hi Jack! Very nice looking setup! I also started palantype on an ortholinear board with the same keycaps. What switches are you using?

Regarding briefing I know that there are palantypists that get by without extensive briefing. They write at a very high chording rate, though. I imagine that there are people who get by without extensive briefing on the stenotype as well.

If you want to talk more about palantype I'm all ears (and keys!). I'd love to know if you find anything of interest in that book - I've looked around but not been able to get a hold of it!

[Jack Chidley]

I'm sure that you're right.  My aim is to be faster than normal qwerty typing and to drive the computer, as much as possible, from the keyboard.  It'd would be great to type at 200+ words a minute but if I 'only' make it to 100+ I'd be delighted.

What I discovered with Plover theory was that it's impossible to do without briefs: many of the top 100 words **are briefs**.  I am dyslexic, so I'd prefer to briefs to be a choice not a requirement from day 1.  What slows my 'normal' typing down is having to remember how to spell individual words.  From my preliminary reading of the Palantype book, it seems the aim with the system is to cut down on the need for briefs.  Of course, no system can eliminate them entirely.

Anyway, thanks for the program and also the plugin architecture.  I may even figure out a way to write my own plugins.

[Jack Chidley]

I am using Gateron clears - 35g linear.  The cheapest decent ones available.

I could find no copies of the book available privately.  Sadly, I think that it's still copyrighted - valid for 70 years after the death of the author.  It seems unlikely that the author died within a year of the book's publication.  I am checking to see what, if anything, is already in the public domain. 

There are a lot of drills in it.  I am sure that I will be able to create a similar set for Typey Type (or elsewhere).  I can certainly give a summary of it at a later date.

[Charley Shattuck]

Jack! That is awesome. I'm glad some people like you are working could keep Palantype alive. It has a tradition and history and I'm thinking for some people it's the best way to go. Personally though, I'm very happy with the Ireland layout.

[Jack Chidley]

From my limited research, Palantype has almost disappeared because there was insufficient demand in the UK.  No one teaches it now and the existing Palantypists are, literally, dying out. 

The UK courts did not support court reporting like in the US from the 70s onwards expecting, wrongly as it turned out, for technology to solve the recording problem for them.  I have been to magistrates courts here, there is a lot of waiting for the various people to record things in their own way.

[Owain]

Whilst browsing for that book I found this patent from 2001

https://patents.google.com/patent/US20020150416

"An apparatus and method to change the mode of computer keyboard use from alpha-numeric language orientation to become a stenotype keyboard where the keys change meaning for this purpose is provided. The present invention is unique in that it uses a standard computer keyboard without requiring mechanical changes or modifications. The apparatus and method thus provide the ability to stenotype on any qualified standard or future keyboard as long as appropriate software is installed on the computer."

Anyway, I can't find another copy anywhere, other than that one in the BL for reading room access only.

Owain

[Jack Chidley]

Yes, the BL reading room copy is what I'm using.  I think that there may be some other training materials via a different route but I haven't investigated that route yet.

The patent thing is interesting.  Plover's software is all on the host system whereas this patent seems to focus on the bit between the physical keyboard and the host. This seems to be what olkb's plank actually does, or at least it's an option in the qmk firmware.

[jessica caudron]

FWIW Infinity makes palantype writers, although probably running $4K each.

There's also the Velotype. again, $1,500 ish, maybe a little more.

[Max Hayden Chiz]

You can get a used Veyboard (Velotype's competitor; uses the same layout, etc.) for like 300 euro

The Velotype, not so much. Basically everyone in Europe who uses one seems to be ditching they veyboards in favor of the Velotype for various reasons

[Max Hayden Chiz]

What is the Ireland layout? I tried finding images on Google and came up empty.

Re: Palantype, studies I found from the 70s said that steno had a stroke rate about 15% less than Palantype at the same speed. But that's not apples to apples. The palantypist only used a dictionary with about 100 entries.

Because of it required much smaller dictionaries to get readable output, there seems to have been hope early on that Palantype would be more usable with computer transcription. But what seems to have killed the idea is just that the mechanics of a Palantype were dramatically more difficult than a steno machine. So reliable lever machines weren't usable and the tech wasn't quite there to do it all electrical with mechanical key switches.

[juliaj...@googlemail.com]

Hi Jack, as a currently working Palantypist I can assure you none of us are dead yet! Nic Lyons of Lyonics is still making Palantype machines, and I think he does a special student rate. I know Sam has had dealings with him. Your keyboard is very interesting, I’d love to know how the Palan layout overlays it. Palan theory is much easier to learn than steno and more similar to English. The majority of us Palantypists actually do use a lot of briefs, or shortforms as we call them, and have actually made an effort over the last couple of years to use more.

[Jack Chidley]

Ireland is the guy that invented the layout for the USA i.e. the Stenotype - the one that Plover is built for

[Jack Chidley]

As for the Palan overlay, I used the basic layout as in the guides. There is a many to one mapping for some keys i.e. F1 to F4 is + F9 to F12 is ^. F5 is E, F6 & F7 I, F8 U. The K, L, ;:, /? keys are the home row for the right hand - mirrored for the left hand.

The idea for using this particular layout is so that I can also use QWERTY too. The lsyout can be switched with a chord. Seems senseless to fingerspell on a Palan / Steno when I can just type it.

[The Michela stenotype system channel]

I agree with juliaj. I had the chance to meet several palantypists of the BIVR (http://bivr.org.uk/) this summer and I got the impression of a very dynamic and certainly not dying group.

[juliaj...@googlemail.com]

I am the Chair of AVSTTR, the Association of Verbatim Speech-to-Text Reporters, and we have at least 14 members who are active working Palantypists and there several more who aren’t members. Projects like Plover and people like Jack making machines will help to ensure the future of the profession as the expense of machines and software is one of the main barriers to new people coming in

[Jack Chidley]

Here's another view of my prototype Palantype keyboard with some fancy keycaps on it: orange is the home row and grey are the other Palantype keys. The white keys are unused in Palantype but are used in QWERTY mode.

Note that the middle 4 keys in grey, at the bottom, are all I. The other 4 keys all all + (left) and ^ (or dot) on the right.

The cost difference in keycaps is substantial: it's $61.85 to buy and ship to the UK from Pimp My Keyboard, one you've added the customs and admin charges you're looking at around £70.  The original keys that I bought on ebay are less than £10.  You can find black ones of those cheapies on AliExpress for £12.48.  By the time you've added custom charges it'll still be less than £40, perhaps only £15 - it all depends on who delivers it, how it's declared for customs and who charges for the customs processing.

[Max Hayden Chiz]

Ted Morin & Julia Jacobie,

I'm doing a blog post about various machine shorthand systems and have a couple of questions

1) Can you get me a URL to Nic Lyons' Lyonics? (Or some other maker of these machines) I'd like to link to some place that sells modern ones that has has actual pictures of them on the web. I'd also like to talk to him about how his machines are made if possible. The stuff I've been able to dig up says there were several historic problems and I'm curious as to how these got solved.

2) All of the info I found comparing Palantype to Steno dates from the 70s at the latest. Is there any more recent material I've missed? Either way, can you put me in touch with any of those 14 or so modern Palantypists? I want to make sure that what I'm saying is current for the present era.

3)  Essentially the material I found said that Palantype machines were much harder to make consistently. But that the extra keys didn't just give you a minor reduction in conflicts but a *huge* reduction in dictionary size. Those studies were using *very* early machine transcription. So they were very constrained. But the Palantype machine had higher word coverage with less than 1/10th the dictionary size. It had slightly more characters per stroke and a 15% higher stroke rate to compensate for fewer brief forms. I'm curious about whether this holds up today or if that was a research artifact. I'd also be curious as to how well that holds up at much higher speeds (225 instead of 180). I'm similarly curious about how it was/is taught and the learning curve.

4) Are there any actual books on Palantype theory that one can buy today? Failing that do you think the 14 or so people you know could share their dictionaries to help Ted and others to create a Plover one? Seems silly to reinvent the wheel, and I'd be curious to compare the two down the line in a future blog post. (I need to put more thought into how to do a comparison between *steno* theories, let alone between steno and Palantype.)

5) Has anyone come up with a Palantype layout for the Atreus? It seems like a reasonable candidate for this given that it's pretty damned close to the shape of Palantype already. If there isn't one, I can probably whip together a QMK file to make that layer if someone who knows something about Palantype (and Plover) can tell me what to put where and how to communicate using various protocols like the Splitography does. (I've been tweaking mine recently anyway.) The main issue is that most people's Atreus' have 60g tactile switches instead of the lighter linear ones. But they are cheap enough / easy enough to make that getting one with linear switches is straight forward. (I wish we could persuade Wim at Velotype to let us make stuff with his 15g shot actuation switches, but he doesn't seem interested. He'd probably be happy to *sell* you a Velotype with a Palantype "language" option. And 1500 euro is *way* better than 4-5k. If someone wants to try this, I can ask him.

6) Anything else I should know about the Palantype, especially in light of that draft post I made about Ortho vs phonetic in that other thread?

On Tue, Nov 13, 2018 at 5:07 PM juliajacobie via Plover <plove...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

Hi Jack, as a currently working Palantypist I can assure you none of us are dead yet! Nic Lyons of Lyonics is still making Palantype machines, and I think he does a special student rate. I know Sam has had dealings with him. Your keyboard is very interesting, I’d love to know how the Palan layout overlays it. Palan theory is much easier to learn than steno and more similar to English. The majority of us Palantypists actually do use a lot of briefs, or shortforms as we call them, and have actually made an effort over the last couple of years to use more.

[Jack Chidley]

Max, I live in the UK and most (all?) of the Palantypists are here too. I am alreafy in contact with several of these people and am doing some of the research that you suggest. This includes finding dictionaries and learning materials - I am certain that there is one with 75,000 entries. Would you be interested in cooperating?

Jack

[Jack Chidley]

I really wish that I had bought the flat keys having just seen them on the discord chat.

[Max Hayden Chiz]

On Thursday, November 15, 2018 at 1:48:38 AM UTC-6, Jack Chidley wrote:

Max, I live in the UK and most (all?) of the Palantypists are here too.  I am alreafy in contact with several of these people and am doing some of the research that you suggest.  This includes finding dictionaries and learning materials - I am certain that there is one with 75,000 entries.  Would you be interested in cooperating?

Jack

Sure. I'm mostly interested in just understanding things at a high level though. I'm intending to learn "normal" Plover. (Unless I get some really unexpected answers about Palantype).

My goal is to provide the contextual material that doesn't seem to be on a webpage anywhere.

[Jack Chidley]

Max, as far as this 

>> 2) All of the info I found comparing Palantype to Steno dates from the 70s at the latest. Is there any more recent material I've missed? Either way, can you put me in touch with any of those 14 or so modern Palantypists? I want to make sure that what I'm saying is current for the present era.  

There is more recent materials.  By the 70s the supply of machines was becoming short: they had been built as a single batch in 1946.  These machines were mechanical which is why there was tolerance, and thus quality, issues.  In the late 70s and early 80s research had been conducted in at least a couple of Universities to improve the system.

Possum Controls Ltd used this research to build a new machine and there is a manual, dating from 1997, that supports the new Palan 2000 with a revised theory because some of the keying had been changed (Palantype 2 is what they called it but some people know it as Palan B).  By 2005 Possum ceased production and support: there wasn't enough business.  This revised layout is the one used by Plover.  The original manual, the one in the British Library dating from the 40s, supports the earlier layout and theory.

 

https://www.sciencedirect.com/journal/applied-ergonomics/vol/11/issue/2 Applied Ergonomics

Volume 11, Issue 2, June 1980, Pages 73-80

Operator error performance and keyboard evaluation in Palantype machine shorthand by A.C.Downtown, A.F.Newell, J.L.Arnott

https://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do;jsessionid=645F61E9296228ABF4EB24EF25B9A680?uin=uk.bl.ethos.344390 The resolution of ambiguities and the correction of errors in the automatic transcription of palantype by Booth, Alexander W. Leicester Polytechnic 1982

https://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.370364 Computer transcription of written shorthand for the deaf by Brooks, C. P.  University of Southampton 1985

http://spellingsociety.org/uploaded_journals/j16-journal.pdf (also https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/47087713.pdf) Journal of the Simplified Spelling Society, 1994/1. J16. .  This includes The Palantype System: another readable shorthand of the English language by Patricia Thomas

http://bivr.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/april2005all.pdf "The technical drawings have been handed to the Royal National Institute for Deaf People for safe keeping , and it is hoped that at some point someone may be able to design a new state of the art Palantype machine."  https://www.nhs.uk/Services/Trusts/ContactDetails/DefaultView.aspx?id=78977 The charity has been renamed to Action on Hearing Loss

[Max Hayden Chiz]

Thanks for the info.

Re: the Possum controls stuff

Since they are still around, we could probably get them to release the copyright and allow us to post their info online. *Maybe* they'd release the engineering stuff for their machine so that people could to private small-batch production runs.

I could ask.

Re: using Palantype with Plover, what keyboard are you using? Do you think an Atreus would work? Is so, could we re-purpose the Alps mount keycaps used on the Splitography or do those depend on irregular switch spacing?

[Jack Chidley]

Max, see inline.

Since they are still around, we could probably get them to release the copyright and allow us to post their info online. *Maybe* they'd release the engineering stuff for their machine so that people could to private small-batch production runs.

I could ask

>> You could.  I am certain that the company owned the copyright for the manual.  I believe that the machine design was passed to the UK charity Action on Hearing Loss.  It is also possible that the rights to the manual passed to them too.  I plan to contact the charity myself.

 

Re: using Palantype with Plover, what keyboard are you using? Do you think an Atreus would work? Is so, could we re-purpose the Alps mount keycaps used on the Splitography or do those depend on irregular switch spacing?

>> I use the 4x4x4x4 from 40percent.club with Gateron clears that I built myself.  I have the splitograhy keyboard too and I can confirm that the keycaps are irregularly shaped but I believe that the switches are regularly spaced.  I don't know what a 'standard' switch spacing is though - if there is one.

Jack

[Max Hayden Chiz]

Are you going to contact that charity and get the design files? Or should I? I'd really like to see those.

[juliaj...@googlemail.com]

Hi Jack,

Nic Lyons of Lyonics is making new Palan keyboards, called The AMY and the price is £1295 I think. It might be worth contacting him to see if he would do you a student price. I can also ask around amongst my colleagues, many of whom bought the new levered machines from the US a couple of years ago, and see if any of them are interested in selling their older machines.