
Art of chording - sieste
https://www.artofchording.com
======
wy35
Honestly, I would only learn chording (steno) if you find it interesting/fun,
and not because you think it will save time in the long run after the initial
time investment. This isn't a trivial weekend adventure -- it's a legitimate
skill that requires hours and hours of consistent practice and training.

That being said, I greatly encourage anyone to try it out. Typing using chords
is so satisfying! If you're looking for a cheap dedicated steno keyboard, take
a look at the Georgi [1].

[1]:
[https://www.gboards.ca/product/georgi](https://www.gboards.ca/product/georgi)

~~~
bryanrasmussen
>and not because you think it will save time in the long run after the initial
time investment.

If you write a lot, about what amount of writing do you think it can in the
pay back the initial time investment?

~~~
pc86
It's unlikely-bordering-impossible that one's writing bottleneck is actually
getting the words into a computer, except on very small timescales (maybe tens
of minutes?)

~~~
bryanrasmussen
unless suffering from writer's block - what would the bottleneck be?

~~~
jszymborski
I type at a little more than 70 WPM, but even when writing this comment, I'm
writing far below that as I'm trying to gather my thoughts, as well as editing
as I'm going along.

Now, when I sit down to write a page for my thesis, I'm faaarrr below the that
70 WPM, since those thought are even harder to sort in my mind.

Clearly, I'd be served by writing handwritten drafts, etc..., but I really
think Steno probably only shines when taking dictations or typing up someones
notes they've written.

------
tyingq
Was curious how fast you could be. Apparently there's a guy that can hit 360
words/minute.[https://www.nyscr.net/news/2017/1/13/can-you-
type-360-words-...](https://www.nyscr.net/news/2017/1/13/can-you-
type-360-words-per-minute-mark-kislingbury-
can#:~:text=Mark%20Kislingbury%20can%20hit%20more,minute%2C%20with%2097%20percent%20accuracy).

That makes him about as fast as a 300 baud modem. And probably around 1.8x the
fastest keyboard typists.

Edit: Curious if this as "optimized" as it can be. Is there a theoretically
faster way to get words from your hands to something digital?

I'm also curious how this works for court cases where a language other than
English comes into play, alongside English. Canada might be a good example,
where French and English dialogue might often co-exist.

~~~
recuter
> Is there a theoretically faster way to get words from your hands to
> something digital?

For the sake of, err, discussion, I can envision some sort of wearable glove
like input device. I know I can play notes on a guitar far faster than he is
inputting characters because of the technique involved. I feel like it could
be possible to come up with a faster method playing around with that idea.

But the ultimate would be hands free, no? Makes one wonder if this is yet
another skill/job about to be blown away by automation.

Offline speech recognition with perfect accuracy will probably come standard
with every phone in a couple of years.

~~~
tyingq
Speech to text is interesting, though the 360 words / minute is already quite
a lot faster than typical speech. Though probably slower than the text to
speech blind users use (450 words/minute?).

I wonder if there's a blind stenographer that can really fly, but just isn't
well known.

I bet there are some unknown talents in the closed captioning space.

Unrelated, I've seen some interesting typos there, especially with strong
English accents like Scottish or Irish. And you can see them improving as
episodes progress. The "RedRock" Irish soap is a good example. They get much
better over time.

------
sieste
From the book

> I'm a programmer who uses stenography in my everyday work. Coworkers often
> come to my desk to chat or ask questions, not knowing that I use a steno
> machine to program and type. As I start typing in front of them, they'll
> watch as words and symbols appear in bursts, faster than they've ever seen
> anyone type before. Then, confused, they'll look down at my hands to see how
> I can possibly move that fast and see the reduced keyboard layout that I'm
> typing on, which always leads to more questions.

Would be really interesting to know how exactly they use steno for writing
code. Also imagine using a keyboard that looks like this [0]

[0] [https://www.artofchording.com/introduction/how-steno-
works.h...](https://www.artofchording.com/introduction/how-steno-works.html)

~~~
skavi
From the How Steno Works section of the link:

> The dictionary is customizable. As the English language develops and new
> words are created, the stenographer can add them to their dictionary. This
> is critical for anyone writing jargon, complex terminology, or programming
> languages

------
arijun
I'm surprised that there seem to be no examples anywhere of anyone seriously
using chorded typing for programming. After cheap chorded keyboards entered
the market and the associated software became free, I assumed it would only be
a matter of time before something like Travis Rudd's incredible demo of voice
coding [1] came out. Perhaps that it hasn't speaks to how difficult it is to
get real speed improvements with a chorded setup?

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8SkdfdXWYaI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8SkdfdXWYaI)

~~~
morinted
I'm the author of Art of Chording—I program full-time with steno in JavaScript
(working mainly with React.)

I'd love ideas on how to demonstrate coding in steno. I struggle with it
sometimes because the slowest part about coding is not the input rate… it's
the brain. I guess if people are looking to code "quicker"… it's not the rate
of input that one would want to explore. I will say that writing comments
became a lot easier when the words started to just flow onto the screen.

Here are my existing videos:

Unscripted:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=711T2simRyI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=711T2simRyI)

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

Looking forward to any suggestions on how to improve or even just the big open
questions you'd want answered on this subject.

~~~
pimlottc
I would imagine that one of the difficulties with use chording for programming
is that so many of the terms used are not normal words. I suppose you can just
create new chords for language keywords or common APIs but it just seems like
there are so many possible unique terms you might need to type at any given
moment. How do you handle long function names, snake case, camel case? Has it
changed the way you name your own variables and functions?

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noman-land
I've always wanted to learn how to do this but I've also been curious how you
can type special symbols like ones that are needed in code. I doubt a court
stenographer is ever writing many curly braces or parentheses.

~~~
gen220
The author does address this. You basically sound out the symbol (eg cr br),
or make a random pattern that’s convenient for your hands, up to you.

The thing that’s still a question for me is variable names. How does one steno
out snake_case or CamelCase?

~~~
morinted
There are modes, like caps lock, but for snake case, camel case, and other
things.

You can also do a stroke-by-stroke basis. For example, I have strokes for
prefix "is" and "on" followed by a capital. So

    
    
        "A*UN SMIT"
    

would be "onSubmit". You could also fall back to forcing an attached,
uppercase word. So:

    
    
        "ON KPA* SMIT"

------
anotherevan
Not actually stenography, but this is an interesting looking chorded input
device: [https://www.tapwithus.com/](https://www.tapwithus.com/)

~~~
jedimastert
I actually own a TAP (gen 2). It's surprisingly quick to pick up, especially
with the apps, and once you get used to them they work surprisingly well.

One of the reasons I got it was actually how appealing the alternate mouse
inputs were.

I tend to "collect" dexterity-based hobbies, so ymmv, but I found it pretty
fun and satisfying to pick up. I'm completely out of practice now (new baby
and wfh sucked up a bit more of my free time) but might just pick it back up
anyways.

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cortesoft
I feel typing speed is rarely my bottleneck for coding/writing/anything I do
on the computer. Not sure who needs to type this fast besides actual
stenographers?

~~~
GreedCtrl
If I could type that fast, I would immediately try to use the keyboard to
think on screen, like thinking out loud (or subvocalizing).

Writing as I think is like climbing with a rope. I don't get mental
superpowers, but I do have an easier time mapping out ideas, as I don't have
to rely so much on memory. Then faster typing means faster, easier ideation.
Maybe I would journal more.

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kanobo
Cool, I've always wondered how the stenography machines worked. Also, I'm
stupid because I read through many pages before realizing I was mispronouncing
'Chording' in my mind as 'Chow-ording' and was wondering where that word came
from.

~~~
noman-land
Chording like playing a chord in music aka playing multiple notes at the same
time. Stenography involves pressing multiple keys at the same time to type
entire words or syllables at a time.

------
romgrk
Anyone has tried a steno keyboard with a modal editor (eg vim)? I'm wondering
if it makes typing faster for that particular use-case.

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daviddaviddavid
I'd be very curious to see relative rates of repetitive stress injuries in
stenographers vs regular typists, controlling for amount of time spent typing,
etc.

On the one hand, when I see something like this I think: Maybe this would be
worth looking into to reduce chances of RSI.

On the other hand, when I look at videos of people typing like this, it
strikes me as being ergonomically weird. Very low keyboards, hands locked into
a relatively small area of space, etc.

I see the author is here. Would love to hear about this from an insider!

Disclosure: full-time programmer, working jazz drummer, amateur pianist who is
always terrified that it's all gonna catch up with me one of these days.

~~~
swsieber
The claim I see being made is that stenography is mostly arm motion driven as
opposed to normal typing being key driven, due to stenography basically being
just around the home row.

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umvi
This is really fascinating.

It reminds me of Chinese characters. Sure, you could use latin characters to
represent a word or phrase. OR you could write a tiny little pictogram that
captures the same thing in a fraction of the time and space.

The only problem is that you now have to memorize thousands of unique symbols
instead of just ~26. I imagine stenographers must go through a similar process
and memorize the "shape" of thousands of words and phrases.

~~~
pessimizer
Shorthand and stenotype have short codes for the most commonly used words, and
individual practitioners often make up their own.

edit: also, written Chinese has been traditionally thought of as the
widespread adoption of a stenographic script:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clerical_script](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clerical_script)

------
disabled
This is not a new concept: Braille users type out Braille (mechanically or
digitally) with Perkins-style 6 or 8-key (in reference to the Braille dots
being encoded) keyboards, only using chords, which are known as Braille
chords.

These Perkins-style keyboards, which are also colloquially referred to as
Braille keyboards, are often integrated into refreshable Braille displays (and
are sometimes standalone devices that are known as Braille notetakers, which
also allow one to utilize various Braille codes better), which is how one
reads digital material. Not only can these keyboards (and chords) be used to
type, they are used to navigate, via screen reader, mobile and physical
computer terminals, along with other interfaces.

When it comes to typing out something in math code, for example, Braille users
have the ultimate advantage over anyone who uses LaTeX/MathML, if they know
which Braille code to learn. Right now, that Braille code is currently Lambda.
They can type out, for example, infty, with a single Braille chord, if they
know what they are doing. Such codes also allow for the spatial encoding of
the integral sign and its components, in a linear manner, along with the back-
translating of that into how it should be displayed visually to a sighted
person.

But, if one learned Braille as an adult, they tend to prefer to at least keep
a standard Bluetooth keyboard around to type in QWERTY/QWERTZ. They cannot
help falling back on it from time to time.

The people who learned Braille in school as a young child tend to prefer
Braille chords over standard keyboards, even for standard typing. It can help
prevent typing errors too, so it is a very useful skill to have.

One can practice these chords on the vast majority of standard keyboards,
including on laptops.

But, there are also a couple of Braille Bluetooth keyboards that are being
sold, but they are typically overpriced for what they are.

~~~
pessimizer
I don't think stenotype is much younger than Braille typewriters.

------
oa335
I read through some of the site. From what I can tell, this would using
stenography works best for typing actual words. I wonder how hard it would be
to configure the stenography software to be able to output strings that I
actually type as a programmer, given that a nontrivial amount of them are made
up on the spot.

~~~
overgard
There's some examples in the article, but it seems like the gist is you assign
a chord to various symbols. Like a curly brace { might use a modified chord
for the word "brace"

~~~
hn_throwaway_99
But that seems to defeat the purpose if typing a single character maps to a
chord. I really don't understand how chording could be used to make
programming faster given how you have things like someLongVariableName, and
especially since good editors already provide excellent support for things
like templates.

~~~
morinted
I still leverage templates and autocomplete from my IDE while using a steno
machine.

My thoughts on going down to one-symbol-per-chord:

\- Due to the small steno layout, you don't need to stretch your hands to far
symbols on the keyboard. \- You're not limited to what's on the keyboard.
Symbols like ÷ and © and any emoji are now first-class citizens. \- There are
cases where you get multiple symbols per chord. For example, calling a
function `()` is one chord. Writing an arrow like `=>` is also one chord.

Overall, I'd say that coding speed doesn't really change as typing fast is not
what makes coding fast.

There are some real advantages that I find difficult to quantify, though. I
switch between stenography and typing for both coding and writing depending on
whether I'm at my desk and I find it hard to express clearly why coding in
stenography feels natural and nice. I suppose: there's a certain fluidity when
you break things down into semantic words rather than simply symbols.

Hope that helps!

~~~
john2095
How do you do the arrow keys and navigate the page?

When coding I seem to expend most of my keystrokes just moving around the
page. I take it you just setup some short chords for each arrow key,
pgup/pgdn, ctrl, alt... etc.

It is hard enough getting around a desktop with just keyboard shortcuts as it
is!? I expect I would waste an inordinate amount of time fiddling with my
dictionary trying to optimize keystrokes for the OS and apps that I spend the
most time in.

------
zigh
Fascinating! In a time of ML algorithm flourished, I'm wondering if there is a
way to combine as few as possible keystrokes and GPT-3 style machine
intelligence to make typing both easy to learn and fast enough to match the
speed of thought. As far as I know, Chinese Pinyin input methods have seen a
lot of improvements in this direction in the past 10-20 years. If one could
reduce the size of keyboard to only 10-20 keys, there will be many innovations
in the computing devices that we use everyday. After all, the size of physical
keyboard is one of the main constraints that limits the form factor of our
phones and portalbe computers.

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sumnole
Another great resource I've found for learning steno is
[http://qwertysteno.com/Basics/HowItWorks.php](http://qwertysteno.com/Basics/HowItWorks.php)

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jakear
This seems similar to the fuzzy-filtering found in many text editors... I’d
never type “IInstantiationService”, I’d just do something like “IIntSer<Tab>”
(And get the module auto-imported too if needed!)

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rijoja
Had an idea relating to this:

If there where to be a heads up display as a reference, the learning curve
would be cut down quite a lot.

Check out contact form if anyone is interested.

[http://tbf-rnd.life/blog/2019/06/16/0-learning-curve-chorded...](http://tbf-
rnd.life/blog/2019/06/16/0-learning-curve-chorded-typing/) [http://tbf-
rnd.life/contact/](http://tbf-rnd.life/contact/)

------
esperent
I've reached a point with typing where I can ~95% touch-type. This is fairly
recent for me, let's say in the last two years. However, most of what I do
with a keyboard is code, and I'm not convinced that touch typing speeds up my
coding that much.

However, if I'm wrong I'd like to put in the effort to reach the final 5%, or
even maybe switch to a different keyboard layout, or teach myself stenography.

Does anyone have any data or insight on touch typing/stenography and coding
speed rather than typing speed?

~~~
toast0
No data, but I don't think you generally need to type all that fast for
coding. You just need to type well enough that it's not an impedement or a
distraction. It's ok to look for some of the symbols you don't use that often.

Fast typing helps a smidge with the easiest problems on topcoder. Of course,
that's after you commit to single character variable names.

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xkfm
I dislike how there are so many theories and it's heavily encouraged to modify
your own dictionary. Makes it somewhat more difficult to learn.

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rabidrat
So it's like stenos create their own Huffman code for all their typing needs,
from one of a few starting dictionaries (systems like Plover).

~~~
fouc
Indeed, I was thinking that generating a chording dictionary based on an
optimal number of bits of information that would reduce the error rate on
typos could potentially speed up overall throughput.

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harry8
Are there any chorded keyboards that have linux drivers (pref in tree) that
don't cost a small fortune?

~~~
rgoulter
See "Hardware" under
[http://www.openstenoproject.org/](http://www.openstenoproject.org/) sounds
like a good place to start.

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tarkin2
If you want to spell out a new word, how does it work?

For this system, You’d need an input device that sends its input to a
dictionary and then sends that through the normal input?

Like another poster here, vim’s modal editing bit with chording makes me
wonder what could be achieved with a normal keyboard

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downshun
This is really fascinating... But is it worth the investment when there's
cheap storage for high quality audio and video recordings, and text-to-speech
does a decent job? What am I missing?

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upatricck
This is interesting, how does it work with different languages, Every
dictionary for every language?? If it's different languages, how is it
switching when using different languages.

~~~
morinted
This is an important topic of development for Open Steno. Machine shorthand
has existed in many languages and is used in many countries.

However, not all of them are "computer" or "realtime" compatible, which
roughly means that you wouldn't be able to distinguish in your writing between
homophones like "their" and "there" and "they're."

Here's a list of some of the languages that have been developed or ported to
Plover: [https://github.com/openstenoproject/plover/wiki/Chorded-
Syst...](https://github.com/openstenoproject/plover/wiki/Chorded-Systems)

There is a Plover plugin to switch on-the-fly between different steno systems.

There is also a plugin to switch between enabled dictionaries on-the-fly.

Finally, there is the idea of bilingual dictionaries, but I haven't seen it
implemented well yet.

There's also the problem of some languages having drastically different
layouts.

So far, the most multilingual and successful stenographer I've seen is Stanley
Sakai. Here's him writing in a Spanish theory that he developed:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eGZ43TID9jU&t=90s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eGZ43TID9jU&t=90s)

I also know that there are bilingual stenographers in Canada who write both
English and French, but I haven't seen it in action yet.

In summary, I think that multilingual stenography is critical for the adoption
of steno, but it's currently not easily accessible or widely used.

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minitech
Are there semantic dual chords that can be used to hide information?

