Other theories - Other languages. How to?

[Daniele Casarola]

Hi!

Reading on forum and group about plover for non english people, I found a lot of interest.
But I wasn't able to find a workflow to configure it for other languages.

I know my language theory layout and I know my language dictionary, but I don't know how to set Plover to use that..

-The first step is to set the keyboard layout. I mean to set the keyboard key to a specific letter. Even if (in my case) number and distribution of keys of my language is like the english one, letters are placed on different keys.

-Then I write the dictionary, I mean to set each combination of keys to a specific word.

Is it possible to solve the above issues? Is there some documentation which guide for that?
Ah, consider that in my case I've not good programming skill... sorry

Cheers

[Emanuele Caruso]

In this article on the Open Steno Blog, Paulo Paniago explains what he did with Portoguese: http://openstenoblog.blogspot.it/2015/04/my-experience-in-open-source.html

Emanuele Caruso
stenoboard.com
utopen.com
openstenoblog.blogspot.com
FREE open steno ebook: http://utopen.com/doubleyourspeed/

[Daniele Casarola]

Thank you very much Emanuele for your link.
I've contacted him and he kindly answered me.

I will update here my experience.

Daniele.

[Emanuele Caruso]

Great! I guess you are trying to do this for the Italian layout, right?

[Daniele Casarola]

Hi Emanuele, yes in my case I'm talking about Italian language.

We have tried on he OS X version, but it seems there's something different among our operating system (he has yosemite and I have el capitn). For some reason it doesn't work.

Anyway what we are trying to do is to change letters layout. But even if we can do that, and in the meantime we create a custom dict.json file, anyway we can't reproduce our language theory, because there are some conditions and rules that can't be set into the dictionary file, but in the source code itself.

Unfortunatly we are not programmer, and our hands are tied.

I've left a post on freelancer.com, and received some answers. Anyway I suppose that it's better to work with someone who knows both programming (python) and steno too. I've some troubles to explain my needs.

Does one of the Plover team can be hired for that instead of someone external to this world?

Thank you very much in advance.

Daniele

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[paulo paniago]

  

 Hello folks;

 I know basically nothing about programming, but this has worked for me, in my Portuguese version of Plover, and in case some body wants to help Daniele change the layout to Italian, here is a summary of the instructions I gave him, and the basic problem with them, I guess, was because I was unsuccessful explaining him were the steno.pyc and sidewinder.pyc files are located:

 

In my Mac with Yosemite all I have to do is to right click on the red Plover icon, after installation, and choose “show content in this packet” (mostrar conteúdo do pacote)

From then, I told him to follow these steps:

contents

resources

lib

python2.7

site-packages

plover

(erase steno.pyc and paste the one I’m sending you)

machine

(erase sidewinder.pyc and paste the one I’m sending you)

restart mac and see if it works

 

as I mentioned above, I send him two files steno.pyc and sidewinder.pyc that I changed by looking at the Italian steno keyboard in this page:

https://www.stenograph.com/pages.aspx?docid=252&id=

 I didn’t test my files so, supposing they work, their might the some letters in the wrong place. And I know they are just the compiled files generated by the program itself, but it works for me in Portuguese.

I don’t know why he couldn’t find were those files are, perhaps it is placed somewhere else in El Capitan.

I also send him a blank plover.cfg, to change for the one in Plover, which I guess may help.

 

And one final observation is that I saw he is concerned about the orthographic rules set for Plover do make automatic corrections in English, but they had not been much of a problem for me using it for Portuguese, but I couldn’t say about Italian…

[paulo paniago]

 

 I had also changed the location of Plover files many times in my mac, so I might have given him wrong directions about were the Plover icon is located. If someone can help here…

[Tobias Schulte]

Hi,

currently I am thinking about the same problems. My background is as follows: I am from Germany, therefore typing both German and English (plus programming). I just started steno and am already able to type many of the top 100 words in qwerty steno with 2-3 WPM. But I also wonder how to proceed. Should I

* Continue to learn the US Layout and try to add a German dictionary on top of it (hello "Steno Hell German" http://stanographer.com/steno-hell-german/)
* Ditch the US layout, and learn the German layout (http://www.zav.cz/german/compkomasch.htm) instead, adding the relevant English dictionary on top of it (since I am no native English speaker, my English vocabulary is more limited than my German, therefore this might be the better approach)
* Use the US layout for English and the German Layout for German and switch between them

Especially the last one brings another problem: How to switch between layouts. Currently I try to practice every now and then when I have to wait for the computer to do some work (compiling). To do this, I have to

* turn on Plover or alternatively switch the OS from QWERTZ to QWERTY to use Qwerty Steno
* Switch my Ergodox to the Plover layer

Supporting German (or any other language) might be done by either forking Plover and changing the layout, the hardcoded rules (orthography.py) and the default dictionary, or by changing Plover in a way to have these configurable from the outside. I am a software developer and should be able to do both, although I do not know Python (yet). Even switching between German and English Plover would be easy -- just start both with different configurations and activate the one you need at the moment. But this will be very error prone.

But the above got me thinking. I have the Ergodox, I have compiled my own firmware, but I am still using normal NKRO-mode for plover. What if the Ergodox would not act as a keyboard, but also a steno machine (or even two). This might be done by emulating an USB hub with multiple devices attached. The first would be the normal keyboard. The second (and third) might be sending TX-Bolt packets (I don't know yet, what the Stenosaurus, Stenoboard and SOFT/HRUF are doing).

With this, it might be possible to have Plover always activated without interfering with the normal keyboard mode. And to practice Steno all I would have to do is toggle to the Steno layer of the keyboard. And to support two different steno layouts, the keyboard just needs to have two steno layers and the PC needs to have two Plover instances running listening to different ports.

But having toggle layers is not the best UX to have. I currently have a default (neo -- http://neo-layout.org/) layer on my Ergodox. Then I have layer switches for the different layers of the neo layout, that are activated as long as I press the layer switches. This has the advantage, that I always know which layer is active -- even when I come back from a break.

The Plover layer is different. I toggle to the Plover layer by typing (pressing and releasing) a key. And to go back to the neo layer, I have to type the key again. To indicate if the neo or the Plover layer is active, a LED is on when the Plover layer is active (like the NUM-Lock or CAPS-Lock LEDs).

Supporting multiple steno layouts would complicate this even further. Now, it might be better to use one of the left-hand S keys as a language selector. I currently always use the lower S key, even when typing STPH. Therefore I might use the upper S as selector for "Here comes German" (or "Here comes English", depending which is more common for me or others). This might be done in the firmware of the keyoard, or in Plover itself.

Oh, this got longer than I anticipated.

Regards,

Tobias

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[sveith]

We currently seem to have several language-specific variants of Plover. It would probably be a major effort to have one "unified" build that supports several languages in parallel, but in the long run, this step is unavoidable, in my opinion. Using the same steno layout for all languages is not feasible.

I am currently working on a custom steno input software which has multi-language support built in from the start. Unlike Plover's approach of sending keystrokes, it integrates with the (Windows-only) Text Services Framework, which solves quite a lot of issues at once: It has better text manipulation support, and you can select the current input language and method right from the Windows language bar. (At the expense of portability, unfortunately.)

You could then have a hotkey (on the keyboard, or even on the steno machine maybe?) to switch between languages. You can type normally in the "regular" system languages, and once you switch to the steno input method, it uses NKRO steno mode. (That part is working seamlessly already.)

The supported steno theories are defined using a configuration file (where you specify the key layout and the multi-key chords). I am not yet sure how to model each language's rules (e.g. what's currently in Plover's orthography.py: https://github.com/openstenoproject/plover/blob/master/plover/orthography.py). I would prefer not to compile them into the program, but have them extensible/user-configurable as well. I'm not sure if some regular expression replacement patterns are going to cut it, though.

Tobias, your suggestion of having a combined steno/NKRO device sounds intriguing. Never thought of it that way. It is rather easy to emulate either a USB HID and an USB ACM COM port device, but emulating an USB hub to have both of them "connected" at the same time sounds like a lot of work to me (though certainly possible).

[Owain]

On Monday, 11 January 2016 08:20:09 UTC, sveith wrote:

We currently seem to have several language-specific variants of Plover. It would probably be a major effort to have one "unified" build that supports several languages in parallel, but in the long run, this step is unavoidable, in my opinion. 

 In the future there may be some keen individuals who can write steno in multiple languages, using different theories and different key layouts for each language, in the same way as changing between English/French QWERTY/AZERTY now.

Owain

[Theodore Morin]

Benoit-Pierre has put efforts into making this possible. Check the open PRs of Plover's GitHub. It is a large development task but the hope is to become language and layout agnostic.

So for the moment, it's true that there are many different builds floating around, but the goal is to have one that can do many, as per the case of a steno user using two languages with two different key layouts, or maybe even different machines with extra keys. If you are technically inclined or are great at user interface design, I would welcome your input in the PR https://github.com/openstenoproject/plover/pull/319

[anobo]

An approach to German is worked out by Mike.  See his post here:
https://groups.google.com/d/msg/ploversteno/MYNlSMD68Qc/Byyw9T8ZCQAJ