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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...

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

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.


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!


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.


Agreed that composition time is largely made up of thinking, however once you've decided what you want to write, you still need to write it.

The other thing that I sometimes end up doing with stenography is just a stream-of-consciousness-style writing where I then have to edit it down.


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"


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

Scripted: 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.


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?


The word "escape" might be written "ES KAIP". I brief it as "SKPAIP".

For the keyboard shortcut, I use "FEFK" which is default in the Plover dictionary.


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We're a technology-first health care company bringing democratic access to clinically validated hearing testing in the form of an iPad app. We support individuals all the up to large companies with a hearing conservation program. We're quickly growing and looking to support existing products as well as need keen people to lead new efforts.

- Intermediate-to-senior Java developer

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I'm a React JavaScript developer on the team. Feel free to reach out to me if you have any questions: ted@shoebox.md


Just to provide a differing opinion, my daily office is the place that I feel most productive. When I'm home, I'm never in work mode because I never (99.9%) work from home.

I like being around lots of people and having face-to-face conversations to work through problems.


Title should definitely be updated. Furthermore, as far as I can tell it should be "Kitty Hawk" not "KittyHawk" [https://kittyhawk.aero/]


The <title> has it as 'Kittyhawk' but the footer says 'Kitty Hawk' and the terms say 'Kitty Hawk Corporation'


The first thing that came to mind was a new brand of patent troll companies that seek to invalidate a smaller company's patent by "proving" it invalid.


What does the "new brand of patent troll companies" gain from this? Patent trolls exist today because of the monetary gain, why would those exist for no monetary gain?


You're telling me that you can't envision a situation where Big Company A holds patents worth billions, and Big Company B wouldn't pay money to see those patents invalidated?

You're telling me that you can't envision a situation where Big Company B could spend millions (instead of billions) in an attempt to bring down such patents and, even if it loses, consider it just a risky bet at best?


Why couldn't Big Company B just do that themselves already?


The bigger patent troll company would have to prove it has been patent trolled by the smaller company though? If the smaller company has never even contacted the bigger one, how is there any shred of a patent abuse violation?


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