Possibility of an iOS app for iPad/iPhone users?
Daiko
Also, are there plans for other tablets like Android & all the other non-Apple tablets out there? It would be good for all tablet users to be able to take Plover with them*
I bought my iPad so I'd have an easier time with providing mobile business services and want to get even faster with Plover if I can (also, I love Open Source & am usually mainly a Linux user, but I wanted to be able to use some tools that were Apple-only... D: ).
I searched for "operating systems" earlier in this group and on the Plover wiki but I didn't find anything on iOS in either location that addressed & answered these questions of mine- please let me know if I have missed or overlooked anything important...
I look forward to hearing your responses!~ ;3
*it is really nice not having to take one's tablet out of luggage when getting checked by the TSA when flying somewhere...
Hesky Fisher
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Plover" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to ploversteno...@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Mirabai Knight
or both, using either USB or Bluetooth plus the Sidewinder or
proprietary steno machines like my Infinity Ergonomic, but so far no
one's volunteered to code it, so we're out of luck. There is a
free-as-in-beer steno app called iStenoPad, but when I tried it (both
with and without the $40 silicon overlay), I found it really
frustrating, due to lack of haptic feedback
(http://plover.stenoknight.com/2012/02/istenopad-overlay-bust.html).
The same company makes an app called iStenoPhone, which is basically
like Swype with a steno keyboard
(http://www.istenopad.com/istenophone.htm), and that I think has
potential, though it sounds like their implementation of it isn't
ideal; for one thing, the keys are too large and close together, so it
looks tricky to differentiate one from the other, defeating the whole
purpose of the thing. For another, I read a review from someone who
said that it doesn't translate multistroke entries, which makes it
sound incredibly annoying.
The mockups that Stan Sakai designed for this purpose, though, have a
lot more potential:
http://stenoknight.com/plover/stenooonew.jpg
http://stenoknight.com/plover/stensample2.jpg
I'd freaking love to have something like this on my phone rather than
Swype. Obviously it would be slower than actual steno, because it
would be done with just one finger versus 10, but it would still be
faster and more accurate than just about any other touch keyboard out
there. Any Android programmers in the group care to give it a try?
Brent Nesbitt
Mirabai Knight
hole KWR- hell that S- awe - some
Okay, so it still needs a bit of polishing, but this is so exciting!
Can I suggest making the keys much, much smaller and farther apart? Unlike in real steno, where you have to be able to hit several keys with one finger, this kind of Swype-like input is best when there's lots of empty gutter space between letters, to avoid accidentally hitting letters on the way to the one you want. And because steno, unlike qwerty, only has 22 keys to represent, there's a lot more empty buffering space available than on a standard on-screen keyboard, provided you make the keys tiny enough. It's the main advantage of steno vs qwerty as a touchscreen input method, in my opinion, so it would be silly not to take advantage of it. No need to duplicate the look of a standard steno keyboard; tiny circles with letters on them, surrounded by lovely great gullies of whitespace, would be ideal.
Wow, thank you so much for doing this! It's ridiculously cool. I can't wait to see how it develops! :'D
Mike Neale
Brent Nesbitt
Yes, it still needs a lot of work. But yes, I'll try making the keys smaller horizontally -but since I was intentionally wanting you to hit 2 keys at once, perhaps the vertical size s should stay?
Also, my intent was to use multi touch so that on a tablet you could use all your fingers like normal. Do you think the swype model would be better than tapping to toggle the keys?
--
Mirabai Knight
> Yes, it still needs a lot of work. But yes, I'll try making the keys smaller
> horizontally -but since I was intentionally wanting you to hit 2 keys at
> once, perhaps the vertical size s should stay?
> Also, my intent was to use multi touch so that on a tablet you could use all
> your fingers like normal. Do you think the swype model would be better than
> tapping to toggle the keys?
hit two keys at once seems like an exercise in futility and
frustration. My vote is emphatically to increase the distance between
all the keys by a lot, both vertically and horizontally. In my brief
experiment this morning, I hit keys I wasn't intending to with
practically every keystroke -- sometimes more than once, so it took me
two or three tries to get everything highlighted at once. Plus if you
do a tap-on, tap-off toggle, you have to send each stroke
individually, whereas if you do a single drag per stroke, they can get
sent automatically, saving a lot of keystrokes in the end.
As you could read from my blog post on iStenoPad
(http://plover.stenoknight.com/2012/02/istenopad-overlay-bust.html),
multitouch simply does not offer enough haptic feedback for accurate
steno -- full stop. The big advantage of the steno keyboard is that it
has so few keys, so you're able to Swype around zippity-blip without
accidentally hitting keys you don't want (so you don't have to deal
with all the guesswork and autocorrection inherent in the Swype model.
I don't know about you, but it drives me mad.) Being able to have a
100% deterministic path-dragging autotouch system would be so much
better than trying to get multiple fingers on your phone or tablet at
the same time. For one thing, if you're doing ten-finger multitouch
you have to rest the tablet on a surface, whereas if you're just doing
single thumb or finger-dragging, you can hold it in your hand. Huge,
huge bonus.
Swype style steno could be revolutionary. Multifinger steno on a
touchscreen, alas, has been tried, and has failed spectacularly. I
don't really see any way that'll change, short of the 3D dynamic
bubble touchscreen that we've been promised but which has so far
failed to materialize:
http://news.discovery.com/tech/gear-and-gadgets/haptic-touchscreen-120606.htm
But even so, if I want to use all ten fingers, I'll pull out my laptop
(or eventually my StenoSaurus). When I want to just take my phone out
of my pocket and write something quick with my thumb, it would be
amazing if I could do it in steno.
Brent Nesbitt
Mike Neale
Mirabai Knight
that the qwerty keyboard is so damn huge that your choice is either
make the keys so tiny that you can't freaking read 'em, or force the
user to traverse over other keys in their path to the ones they want,
which means you have to build in all sorts of imperfect algorithms to
try to figure out which keys they meant to hit, versus which ones were
just hit by happenstance on the way.
The steno keyboard, on the other hand, is compact enough that even on
a phone you can include all the keys necessary to form any word in
your dictionary, with letters at a readable size (though of course if
you know steno you don't need to read the letter labels anyway, so if
you need to make the "keys" tiny and the gutters huge, it won't be
particularly confusing to an experienced stenographer), but with
enough white space for your finger to travel in the *gutter* rather
than over other letters. That takes it from a frustrating algorithmic
system to a delightful deterministic one. Observe:
http://stenoknight.com/ploverkeystemplate.png
http://stenoknight.com/ploverkeyssnap.png
http://stenoknight.com/ploverkeyssnappath.png
Your finger only hits the keys it actually wants, dipping into the
gutter when it needs to go elsewhere on the keyboard. It lifts up, the
stroke is sent, it's put into the stroke buffer (just like in Plover
proper), and the translation is applies. Do another swiping stroke,
and according to the rules of your dictionary, it's either combined to
the previous stroke to make a new translation, or it auto-inserts a
space and outputs the next word. Couldn't be simpler!
Mirabai Knight
> proper), and the translation is applies. Do another swiping stroke,
Rob B.
Let's consider a landscape phone steno keyboard. I want it more like Minuum. The keys should almost be arranged as a single row in steno order. But tha
Robert Brewer
Argh, new phone, please disregard my previous message fragment.
I'm warming up to the swipe-based steno concept Mirabai is proposing. I'll add to it. I don't want to make my finger do the full zig-zag pattern, especially in landscape.
Let's consider a landscape phone steno keyboard. Maybe it could look something more like the Minuum keyboard. The keys would almost be arranged as a single row in steno order. But that's hard to skip around the keys you don't want. So maybe they are in 2 rows and slightly offset. I don't have a drawing program right now, but it would look something like this:
S T P H * F P L T D
K W R A O E U R B G S Z
(only there would be more space between the 2 rows). The idea is that you can swipe left to right in a mostly continuous motion, and while doing so, you zig and zag a little up and down to hit the keys you want and avoid the ones you don't want. You're mainly concerned with hitting the top edge of the lower keys or the bottom edge of the upper keys so your finger doesn't have to move up or down very much on its way from the left to the right.
In portrait mode this "stretched" layout may not fit so well; Mirabai's diagrams fit better and look more familiar too. Offering users a choice of layouts via some settings is always nice too.
-Rob
Let's consider a landscape phone steno keyboard. I want it more like Minuum. The keys should almost be arranged as a single row in steno order. But tha
You received this message because you are subscribed to a topic in the Google Groups "Plover" group.
To unsubscribe from this topic, visit https://groups.google.com/d/topic/ploversteno/yAJnm9sjOM4/unsubscribe.
To unsubscribe from this group and all its topics, send an email to ploversteno...@googlegroups.com.
Brent
Mirabai Knight
this is getting there {!} yeah vowels could stand to B a little farther {a^} part KWBG but this has tons of potential {!}
Okay, back to qwerty...
If the keys could somehow get even smaller and farther apart, you've really got something here. Maybe the opposite of the one-line minuum-style keyboard that was proposed; taking up more screenspace vertically (possibly even one line per four-key group?), so that even in portrait mode the width of the screen isn't the main consideration in determining the distance between keys?
This is so freaking cool. My mind is blown. I want this desperately!!!
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Plover" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to ploversteno...@googlegroups.com.
Mirabai Knight
Because I know there was an objection to lots of finger squiggling and zigzagging, but the nice thing about steno order is that it only goes one way, so if you always started at the top and worked down, that might not feel too bad.
S T K P W H
R A O * E U
F R P B L G
T S D Z # *
(The second star because I often find myself putting in the star as an afterthought for strokes that require it.)
Robert Brewer
Just tried Brent's new app and in landscape on my phone it's a nice size. I think if the vowels were spread just a little further apart it would work well. The different colors on the vowels is a nice touch and I think that's enough to convey that the vowel row was moved up compared to the standard layout.
Portrait thoughts in my next message.
-Rob
Robert Brewer
Yes, the dreaded finger squiggling is keeping me awake tonight. :)
I think the defined steno letter ordering is fascinating and there may be other ways to utilize that property.
I've noticed a minor issue in the landscape layout: when I use my right index finger as the squiggler, it's kinda in the way of the keys I'm trying to wrangle next as I swipe left to right. But when I use my left index finger, it's clear sailing because I can see the upcoming keys I want to swizzle.
I like Mirabai's latest "just keep going in a mostly straight line" portrait idea. If we make it go bottom to top we can somewhat solve the above issue when using either hand:
P A U B S *
K R E P T #
T H * R G Z
S W O F L D
-Rob
Robert Brewer
I just realized that running your finger along the bottom edge of each row in Mirabai's recent portrait layout would let you see the upcoming letters in that row when using either hand. So I think the column-based layout I posted is not as nice due to its funky direction of flow.
-Rob
lit...@googlemail.com
Yeah, it would be great to make Plover compatible with iOS, Android,
or both, using either USB or Bluetooth plus the Sidewinder or
proprietary steno machines like my Infinity Ergonomic, but so far no
one's volunteered to code it, so we're out of luck. There is a
free-as-in-beer steno app called iStenoPad, but when I tried it (both
with and without the $40 silicon overlay), I found it really
frustrating, due to lack of haptic feedback
(http://plover.stenoknight.com/2012/02/istenopad-overlay-bust.html).
The same company makes an app called iStenoPhone, which is basically
like Swype with a steno keyboard
(http://www.istenopad.com/istenophone.htm), and that I think has
potential, though it sounds like their implementation of it isn't
ideal; for one thing, the keys are too large and close together, so it
looks tricky to differentiate one from the other, defeating the whole
purpose of the thing. For another, I read a review from someone who
said that it doesn't translate multistroke entries, which makes it
sound incredibly annoying.
I have the iStenoPhone app and it seems to translate multistroke entries fine for me. For only 69p it's great.
Mirabai, re. the iStenoPad app what do you think of this idea? -
http://cheapsteno.wordpress.com/2011/01/05/the-warpedspeed-steno-writer-a-cheap-but-effective-diy-lightspeed/
Daiko
Daiko
...maybe I can pick up the iOS slack by learning how to make apps for it, couldn't hurt, right? ;3
'sides, I REALLY want to see Plover make it on to ALL DEVICES, even the locked-down proprietary ones (no me gusta MS though :p )
Daiko
Mirabai Knight
I just tried StenoKeyboard on my Samsung Galaxy Tab 2, and I like it even better than on the phone. Really smooth and comfortable, with no accidental key hits at all. I still have to vote for autosending strokes, though. I can't figure what the use is of the send bar. Just seems to interrupt the smooth flow of text, which is otherwise such a joy.
Daiko
Mirabai Knight
Don't thank me -- thank Brent! As a proof of concept, it's fantastic. It still needs full dictionary implementation to be fit for daily use. For instance, punctuation is still in French brackets, and commands like Return and Backspace don't work. But still! It has a huge amount of potential. I can't wait to be able to use it full time. Brent is amazing.
Glad to hear that we've got something so wonderful already... I will look into this, thanks, Mirabai~ :D