Open Steno Project: Bringing Stenography to Everyone

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.

Also see the awesome <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;stenoknight" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;stenoknight</a> , who does live captioning at various Open Source events. Always impressive and high-quality.

(Repost of previous comment from about a month ago <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=21233836" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=21233836</a> as it seemed relevant, although I haven&#x27;t progressed much in my proficiency yet)<p>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&#x2F;Colmak&#x2F;single-key-at-a-time-layouts will never really get you there.<p>⁰ <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;ergodox-ez.com" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;ergodox-ez.com</a><p>¹ <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.openstenoproject.org" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.openstenoproject.org</a><p>² <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;qwertysteno.com" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;qwertysteno.com</a><p>³ <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=RBBiri3CD6w" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=RBBiri3CD6w</a>

There&#x27;s a fantastic, tight-knit community associated with the Open Steno Project. I&#x27;m in the process of learning steno, and <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;didoesdigital.com&#x2F;typey-type&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;didoesdigital.com&#x2F;typey-type&#x2F;</a> is a fantastic page that does drills that builds up steno skills.

See also this contalk from 2013 by Mirabai Knight: &quot;Plover: Thought to Text at 240 WPM&quot;<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=Wpv-Qb-dB6g" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=Wpv-Qb-dB6g</a>

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.

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

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!?

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.<p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;benoit-pierre&#x2F;plover_michela" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;benoit-pierre&#x2F;plover_michela</a><p>[1] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;xahlee.info&#x2F;kbd&#x2F;i&#x2F;michela_stenotype_system_81845.pdf" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;xahlee.info&#x2F;kbd&#x2F;i&#x2F;michela_stenotype_system_81845.pdf</a>

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

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&#x27;s a job, I guess.

I recently started practicing Teeline shorthand. It&#x27;s a system for pen and paper. I might not even use it in practice but it&#x27;s cool to learn by itself. It&#x27;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.

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