
Open Steno Project: Bringing Stenography to Everyone - BafS
http://www.openstenoproject.org/
======
jaredwiener
I met someone at a conference who was both a stenographer and a developer.
Because the dictionaries which convert the keystrokes into words are just
JSON, he changed them to common commands/code snippets. Watching him code was
mindblowing.

~~~
pmoriarty
Much of the speed of stenography comes from using macros, and macros should be
available in any decent editor without needing the use of a steno keyboard.

For example, both vim and emacs have snippet or template plugins (ex:
yastnippet, snipmate, ultisnips, xptemplate, etc) that can be activated with a
short keystroke and which then expand to whatever code or text the user
desires. Then, depending on the features of the snippet/templating plugin in
question lots of other advanced behavior (such as selecting items from a menu,
activating sub-snippets/sub-templates, etc) can be activated. No need to use a
steno keyboard for any of this.

~~~
SuperPaintMan
There are other benefits to using a smaller chorded keyboard though, namely
with RSI prevention and general comfort. That's kind of what I was going for
with the QWERTY layout for Georgi. Rather then using chording for briefs and
phonetic phrasing, it's just used for simple mapping with QMK. Makes for a
compact and ergonomic board. Check out the layout I've linked below.

Weirdly, though developed for Georgi the lightweight springs have found
themselves back into Gergo and GergoPlex as users have reported it helping
with their RSI flareups (compared to traditional mechs)

[1] [http://docs.gboards.ca/Unboxing-Georgi](http://docs.gboards.ca/Unboxing-
Georgi)

[2]
[https://www.gboards.ca/product/gergo](https://www.gboards.ca/product/gergo)

------
Karrot_Kream
There's a fantastic, tight-knit community associated with the Open Steno
Project. I'm in the process of learning steno, and
[https://didoesdigital.com/typey-type/](https://didoesdigital.com/typey-type/)
is a fantastic page that does drills that builds up steno skills.

~~~
SuperPaintMan
Don't forget The Art Of Chording! It's pretty much the go to guide on
understanding Plover Theory!

[https://www.artofchording.com/](https://www.artofchording.com/)

------
JoshTriplett
Also see the awesome
[https://twitter.com/stenoknight](https://twitter.com/stenoknight) , who does
live captioning at various Open Source events. Always impressive and high-
quality.

~~~
eitland
I guess those were the ones I saw at an Angular conference in London.

It was a totally amazing experience, and for a non native speaker allowed me
to catch every joke and nuance (or so I think).

At one time the speaker was talking about the scaffolding system of Angular
that I can't remember the name of right now and it became a bit recursive with
templates of templates and that was the only time when the stenographer lagged
slightly, the speaker realized and took it a bit further until the
stenographer realized it and made a witty comment instead.

~~~
JoshTriplett
At BangBangCon, they managed to fully capture the nuance of audio-based humor,
to the point that their captions made funny things _funnier_.

Watch the video from BangBangCon 2019 on steganography for one example; the
presenter hid data in audio files, so the stenographer carefully described the
data-enabled files as sounding "perfectly normal, unsuspicious".

------
vanderZwan
See also this contalk from 2013 by Mirabai Knight: "Plover: Thought to Text at
240 WPM"

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wpv-Qb-
dB6g](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wpv-Qb-dB6g)

------
pgeorgi
Looks like a project to build a stenotype machine (chorded keyboard entry),
not to promote stenography which more commonly means various techniques of
shorthand writing.

~~~
jesserosenthal
It's the project behind Plover
([https://github.com/openstenoproject/plover/wiki/Beginner's-G...](https://github.com/openstenoproject/plover/wiki/Beginner's-Guide:-Get-
Started-with-Plover)), a cross-platform free steno program that works with
normal (NKRO) keyboards and steno machines. There are also a number of
hobbyist steno machines, made by the community, that run ~$100, instead of
>$1000 for a real machine.

[https://www.gboards.ca/product/georgi](https://www.gboards.ca/product/georgi)

[https://stenomod.blogspot.com/](https://stenomod.blogspot.com/)

I'm typing this, in Plover, on a georgi.

~~~
cosarara
Is the use of stenography related to the liberal use of commas in your
comment?

~~~
arthurcolle
could be the dude's writing style

------
iod
(Repost of previous comment from about a month ago
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21233836](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21233836)
as it seemed relevant, although I haven't progressed much in my proficiency
yet)

I have begun the path to learning stenography. Steno involves chording, or
pressing multiple keys at once. Multiple keys at once means greatly improving
the information density of when you type allowing professionals to type 240
words per minute (realtime), which is just not possible on single-key-at-a-
time keyboards. Unfortunately most commonly available, non-gaming keyboards do
not natively support multiple keys at once which is also known as n-key
rollover (nkro). I ended up buying a pre-assembled, fully opensource hacker
keyboard Ergodox EZ⁰, and have a custom layout firmware that matches up with
the open steno project¹ . From here I am using Querty Steno² to practice my
chording. Here is an example video someone did of using steno for programming
a simple FizzBuzz on a different keyboard on YouTube³. In my opinion, if
anyone is looking to really take their typing to the next level, chording is
the only way and Dvorak/Colmak/single-key-at-a-time-layouts will never really
get you there.

⁰ [https://ergodox-ez.com](https://ergodox-ez.com)

¹ [http://www.openstenoproject.org](http://www.openstenoproject.org)

² [http://qwertysteno.com](http://qwertysteno.com)

³
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RBBiri3CD6w](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RBBiri3CD6w)

~~~
clarry
Yeah, not convinced. Yet another youtube video where someone had to first
build and try to memorize their custom dictionary preloaded with the specific
words they are going to use to write the program they have in their head...

At least this one actually seems to remember their inputs well enough, I
wonder how many times they practiced? I've seen similar videos before and it
is hilarious to watch when they're trying to recall the chords they
programmed.

I don't see this scaling for real projects with thousands and thousands of
complicated identifiers, camelcase, crazy abbreviatin, acronyms, etc. Each
project is going to have its own set of identifiers and you're going to need a
custom dictionary for each of them.

Steno is great for natural languages that evolve very slowly over time and
which can be largely learnt once and then used forever. Code is a rather
different beast.

~~~
zozbot234
It only takes a few seconds to "program" a new chord combo into your custom
per-project dictionary. You can do it dynamically while you code. (You can
also use chords for editor macro commands, which, broadly speaking, _are_
something you "learn once and use forever".)

~~~
clarry
> It only takes a few seconds to "program" a new chord combo into your custom
> per-project dictionary.

I know. It also takes only a few seconds to look up a word in a dictionary.

It takes much longer to _memorize_ thousands of ever-changing chords for
different projects. And when you haven't memorized them, typing is going to be
very slow and awkward. Kinda like trying to write an essay when you need a
dictionary for every other word.

~~~
zozbot234
> It takes much longer to memorize thousands of ever-changing chords for
> different projects.

I'm skeptical of this. A chord sequence is of similar complexity to an
identifier (the keys on a stenotype keyboard have mnemonic designations to
make this easier), and people memorize commonly-used identifiers just fine, as
part of getting familiar with a new project.

------
thepete2
Is there an international stenographic system? The one on this site only works
for English as far as I can tell.

~~~
yorwba
The underlying dictionaries Plover uses can be changed:
[https://github.com/openstenoproject/plover/wiki/Dictionary-F...](https://github.com/openstenoproject/plover/wiki/Dictionary-
Format#strokes-and-dictionaries)

So if you want to optimize for typing another language, you can swap in
corresponding dictionaries and type away. There's only the slight problem that
there might not yet exist any for your language...

~~~
zozbot234
It's not that easy, since mnemonic key labels (the actual assignment from keys
to "letters") might change depending on the overall system. Some stenotyping
systems may even use subtly-different keyboard _designs_ , that wouldn't match
the stenotype keyboards Open Steno Project was designed to work with.

------
z3t4
Anyone remember texting on a feature phone using the numeric keys? I never
learned it myself. But those good at it would still beat me typing on a
virtual keyboard on my smartphone. I wonder if you could actually program
using just 12 keys as well!?

~~~
thunderbong
It was called A9 mode, I think!

~~~
klez
I think you meant T9

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T9_(predictive_text)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T9_\(predictive_text\))

~~~
thunderbong
Right! Thanks. I remember having gotten quite proficient in it!

~~~
klez
Yeah, me too. It's incredible how fast it can be, when words are in the
dictionary.

I need to type code in my messages sometimes (like quick help for a
colleague). I think it would be a nightmare with T9.

------
klez
Nice to see someone developed a plug-in[0] for the Michela machine[1] (the one
used in the Italian Parliament). The one used in the Parliament is actually
just a midi keyboard, which means it can be reproduced with a relatively cheap
2-octaves off-the-shelf midi keyboard.

[0] [https://github.com/benoit-
pierre/plover_michela](https://github.com/benoit-pierre/plover_michela)

[1]
[http://xahlee.info/kbd/i/michela_stenotype_system_81845.pdf](http://xahlee.info/kbd/i/michela_stenotype_system_81845.pdf)

~~~
tutanchamun
On youtube is a person who shows how to mod [0] a cheap midi keyboard for use
as a steno device and also has videos showing how the typing on the michaela-
midi looks [1].

[0]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q9Y9jtOB7G0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q9Y9jtOB7G0)

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bfu-d93X2S4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bfu-d93X2S4)

------
sohkamyung
My bad: I mis-read that headline as "Steganography" and as I read the
comments, I kept wondering how making typing faster would obscure
communications. :-)

~~~
hinkley
I was quite confused by why someone was sharing a non sequitur about how fast
a steganographer they met could type. Why is this relevant to the story?

------
vkaku
Neat. The list art of taking down dictations fast. Wish I knew it in school
(and that they had allowed it in school). I hated dictation but for some
people, it's a job, I guess.

~~~
DennisP
Not only dictation, you can also use it to type your own work at 150+ words
per minute. I've seen fiction writers say it helped a lot, not just for raw
typing speed but because it kept them in flow.

~~~
0xdeadbeefbabe
Heh wonder what the readers thought.

~~~
skyyler
With a good editor / editorial staff the reader won't notice at all.

~~~
DennisP
Also the authors could spend as much time as they want doing revisions, and a
lot of that would go faster too.

------
praptak
I recently started practicing Teeline shorthand. It's a system for pen and
paper. I might not even use it in practice but it's cool to learn by itself.
It's pretty clever and sort of layered. Letters are the first layer, rules for
connecting them are the second, then there are short notations for common
words and word groups, then there are shorthands for common suffixes, prefixes
and letter combinations. It is satisfactory to lets you make a shorthand even
shorter.

~~~
tomcooks
Any pointer on how to study and practice this?

~~~
praptak
The "Shorthand Sue Teaches Teeline" YouTube series take maybe 20 mins together
and give a very good basic understanding.

A decent web intro: [http://realerthinks.com/teeline-for-the-curious-a-story-
of-l...](http://realerthinks.com/teeline-for-the-curious-a-story-of-learning-
things-because-i-can/)

A text on some general rules (intermediate level?):
[http://natashacspencer.blogspot.com/2010/10/introduction-
to-...](http://natashacspencer.blogspot.com/2010/10/introduction-to-
teeline.html)

A searchable dictionary, good as a reference:
[http://realerthinks.com/a-searchable-teeline-
dictionary/](http://realerthinks.com/a-searchable-teeline-dictionary/)

I also bought the "The Teeline Gold Course Bk". It's good.

Another one which I bought (used for a few dollars) but not yet opened is
"Teeline Gold Word List".

HTH

------
cjbprime
Steno is great! But it takes a few years of hard effort to learn, and voice-
to-speech tech is excellent now.

~~~
rinchik
> voice-to-speech tech is excellent now

I wouldn't say that it's excellent now. It still has a long way to go. Small
example, try enabling captions in Google's meet. Those are awful. Don't get a
lot of words right, if you have an accent it's even worse. And distinguishing
between different people talking? Forget about it...

~~~
cjbprime
It's true, that's terrible. But it'll probably get fixed in less time than it
would take me to become proficient in steno.

