
The Open Steno Project - jonbaer
http://www.openstenoproject.org/
======
jdnier
Here's a really interesting interview with the founder of Plover, Mirabai
Knight, explaining how she got started and how efficient steno can be. "Steno
is so ridiculously more efficient than typing every word out letter by letter
that it’s possible to exceed the average qwerty speed in a matter of months,
once you’ve got the phonetic system in your muscle memory."
[https://geekfeminism.org/2010/10/12/plover-freeing-
stenograp...](https://geekfeminism.org/2010/10/12/plover-freeing-stenography/)

~~~
pmoriarty
I got interested in steno once, and even designed and started making my own
custom open source steno keyboard before Open Steno existed (though that's a
story for another day). This led me to look in to learning steno, and I
discovered that the main reason that stenographers type as fast as they do is
that they memorize tons of macros (in vim and emacs terms). The triggering of
a macro will result in a whole phrase, or even sentence being written out (or
just a shorthand for that word/phrase is written out, and that can later be
converted by hand in to that word/phrase).

On an ascii keyboard, that would be like typing something like \d and having
the phrase "The defendant states that" appear.

It's obvious that simply by using that technique alone (which can be used on a
regular keyboard too), one can type many orders of magnitude faster than
someone who's typing out each individual word letter by letter (or even
phonetically). Some steno systems will give the stenographer hundreds if not
thousands of such macros to memorize.

Of course, there's also the phonetic spelling stenographers use if they don't
already know a macro for a given word (or for a proper noun), and there's the
funky chorded keyboard that makes it efficient to type thousands of different
macros with a relatively few keys and without moving the fingers much. But
that's secondary to the heavy reliance on macros.

I hate memorization, and didn't want to spend the years that it would take to
master steno, so never really wound up pursuing this myself. So I don't
actually know steno myself, so please take the above explanation with a grain
or two of salt. But that's my understanding of how the greatest speed
advantages are achieved with steno.

I'd love to hear from some professional stenographers as to whether my
impression was correct.

~~~
mrkgnao
> It's obvious that simply by using that technique alone (which can be used on
> a regular keyboard too), one can type many orders of magnitude faster than
> someone who's typing out each individual word letter by letter (or even
> phonetically).

It probably helps if the nature of the text you have to type is somewhat
formulaic.

~~~
vanderZwan
Makes me wonder if we could design a programming language that is steno-
friendly. I'm sure many of the requirements would translate to better human
readability too.

~~~
kwhitefoot
Why do you want to type code quickly? I gave up touch typing in high school
more than forty years ago but have been coding for most of the intervening
time. I don't think I ever felt a need to type code faster because even with
just two fingers I still type code faster than I can think it.

~~~
kqr
Because I have to pause my train of thought to type. And the longer I have to
pause, the more likely I am to lose some vital part of the mental model I am
juggling. Therefore, being able to type quickly and get back to thinking
sooner is a good thing.

I mean, going only by lines of code written per day, one would think I would
be content with being able to type only at maybe 8 words per minute, and
that's on a good day! But it is obvious to anyone why being able to type only
8 words per minute can be detrimental to a programmer.

~~~
Gracana
> 8 words per minute

Most people who type "incorrectly" but have lots of practice can do 50-100wpm.
That's my observation/experience, anyway. I don't touch type but I'm plenty
quick enough. Is there a useful difference between that and 200wpm steno, for
programming?

~~~
kqr
If anyone has data on that, I'd be an interesting read.

I'm talking plainly in terms of a null hypothesis, though. If we agree that
there is a notable difference between 8 and 50 WPM, we should assume the
effect also holds between 50 and 250 WPM, unless otherwise proven.

There is no reason to believe the "cutoff" value where the effect stops being
noticable is at, say, 100 WPM, just because that happens to be a common Qwerty
typing speed.

------
userbinator
_Top QWERTY Typist: 120 wpm

Top Dvorak Typist: 140 wpm_

I use QWERTY and I can definitely maintain 140WPM easily when typing something
from memory or when participating in realtime chat. In short bursts, ~230WPM
isn't difficult. A look at sites like TypeRacer shows that there are indeed
many typists who can achieve 150-160WPM, and some occasionally exceed 200.

That said, I think typing speed is highly dependent upon the keyboard, and
layout is only one of many other factors. From personal experience I have a
feeling most keyboards out there are extremely suboptimal, with too much key
travel and heavy actuation force. I've not be able to go above 130WPM on any
laptop keyboard, for example, and even trying to achieve 100 feels extremely
tiring. On the other hand, my desktop keyboard happens to have extremely light
keys and shallow travel with a good bouncy "cushion" at the end, and I can
type for many hours at much higher speeds without feeling tired.

Steno's biggest advantage comes from having very long words produced with a
single chord, but the average word length is not so high, and most faster
typists I know, as do I, already somewhat "chord" keys for common sequences
(otherwise transposition errors wouldn't appear at all --- "hte" instead of
"the" being one example, as those with experience will tend to hit both keys
almost simultaneously for that.)

~~~
mkl
> On the other hand, my desktop keyboard happens to have extremely light keys
> and shallow travel with a good bouncy "cushion" at the end

What keyboard model is this? I've been looking for ones with very short
travel.

~~~
userbinator
It's a _TurboStar KM-2601P_ , a pretty generic-looking keyboard with some
multimedia keys on the top and a "turbo" button that adjusts the auto-repeat
rate from "none" to "ludicrous". For some reason none of the big search
engines (Google Bing Yahoo... and DDG) give _any_ results(!?) for that model,
but that's _exactly_ what is printed on the sticker on the back and I do
remember searching for it a few years ago and getting quite a few results...
and I've even mentioned it before, along with a few others, in various forum
posts etc.

On the other hand, there are mentions of the KM-2 _5_ 01P and KM-2601 (without
the P suffix), which look the same except for the logo but I'm not sure if the
slightly different model number means they have the same switch
characteristics:

[http://www.pctekonline.com/ps2eag104key.html](http://www.pctekonline.com/ps2eag104key.html)

[https://www.olx.ua/obyavlenie/prodaetsya-multimediynaya-
klav...](https://www.olx.ua/obyavlenie/prodaetsya-multimediynaya-klaviatura-
kme-turbo-star-km-2601-IDkTi2M.html)

A bit more digging found the company:

[http://www.kmepc.com/](http://www.kmepc.com/)

The total travel isn't very short --- laptop-style switches would be shorter
--- but it doesn't take much force to get past the tactile "hump" where it
actuates, and after that is a bouncy feeling that helps in pushing the finger
back up. Perhaps what I find most desirable is that the drop in force over the
hump is not very steep, unlike with many other keyboards I've used where it
feels like the key just stays down with very little force and refuses to come
back up until the finger is completely removed from it.

Incidentally, I have a mechanical keyboard with blue ALPS switches, but it
feels more tiring to type on it than this KM-2601P.

------
nightcracker
The metric that a top dvorak typer is 20 WPM faster than a top qwerty typer is
not true. Dvorak is more ergonomic, but doesn't make you type substantially
faster.

~~~
pmoriarty
If I was going to go to all the trouble of learning a non-qwerty keyboard
layout, I wouldn't choose dvorak, but would probably choose something else
that's supposed to be even more efficient and ergonomic.

But for me it's really not worth switching from qwerty, as I don't want to
have problems typing on someone else's qwerty keyboard when I need to -- which
is a problem I've heard many non-qwerty typists report having, even if they
were once fluent in qwerty. Some do report that they can make the cognitive
switch from one to the other relatively easily, but some can't.

So for me it's not worth the risk of spending all that time to learn another
layout just to find it hampers my qwerty-typing ability when I might need it.

If I was going to learn anything, it would be steno -- as at least it being on
a radically different keyboard should mean that learning it shouldn't impact
my qwerty-typing ability.

~~~
untoreh
I was just trying colemak, from what I read the loss in qwerty is dued to
people making the fast jump, I will see if learning the different layout in
like the evening and keeping qwerty for the rest of the day preserves both
memories

~~~
zZorgz
I'm a dual qwerty/colemak touch typist. I was able to learn colemak quickly
with low risk of losing qwerty _because_ I was already a very good touch
typist. A large amount of typing skill is transferred which is why people with
poor typing skills have such a difficult time learning a new layout.

As far as say Dvorak or colemak gaining you faster speeds, I'm pretty doubtful
of that claim. It has more to do with how much effort you decide to put in.

------
qwertyuiop924
I'll stick with my Model M for now.

Although I have been looking into the possibility of a compact chorded
keyboard: it would make typing on the go feasable.

...Hang on a minute: I play recorder. There are 8 keys on a recorder, and
there are 8 bits in an ASCII sequence (which is what I'm typing). Suddenly, I
think I see a viable design: get me the Arduino.

------
kleiba
Very cool, but unlikely that I would be a customer of this. Most of my typing
is for programming, not writing long prose, and for programming, my typing
speed is typically not the bottle neck.

------
kqr
If anyone Dutch, German, Swedish, Danish or Norwegian is following this
project, please tell me if you know of a dictionary/system/way to create a
dictionary for any of those languages. I would like to use Plover for Swedish,
but am hindered by the lack of a dictionary. I know the languages I enumerated
has often shared systems for both machine steno and shorthand in the past, so
I'm open to any such suggestions.

------
stepvhen
The website says it would be good for coders, but I'm skeptical; there are far
too many particular characters that wouldnt translate as easily to steno as
natural language, not to mention the need for keyboard shortcuts to compile
run etc.

~~~
suby
I'm sure there are people out there who can make it work for programming, but
I would strongly advocate against trying. I'm a programmer now, but before I
got into programming I was on track to become a Stenographer. I wrote at
length about this two years ago when there were a few articles on HN
discussing the possibility of using Stenography for coding.

[http://www.danieljosephpetersen.com/posts/programming-and-
st...](http://www.danieljosephpetersen.com/posts/programming-and-
stenography.html)

Negativity aside, I'm pretty thrilled to see Open Source projects in the
field. It costs 4,000 dollars for Case Catalyst, which you can think of as
Microsoft Word for Stenographers. It's worth it if you're a professional, but
I suspect that the price is only that high because there's no competition.

edit: In fact, I think the price might have gone up in the last two years. I
could have sworn that it was 3,000 dollars back in 2014.

~~~
stepvhen
dont get me.wrong i think it is a wonderful project, and i would def try it
out, but i dont forsee much benefit for any programmers, unless youre writing
pure sql or cobol, i guess

------
smoyer
I would also,recommend playing around with ASETNIOP ... It's a chorded
keyboard with auto-completion.

------
jagermo
Link to "Ergodox" links to a shitty scamming site for me - be careful.

~~~
morinted
Fixed, thanks.

