109K views · Mar 21, 2013 · 34:21 · 8 HN recommenders · 17 mentions · discussed 2014–2023
Mirabai Knight's PyCon 2013 talk on Plover, a free cross-platform stenography engine that lets people write at up to 240 WPM on ordinary hardware, including a demo of coding by steno.
Why Hacker News points people here: HN's standard reference when typing speed, ergonomics, or alternative input comes up, for its live demo and the open-source steno ecosystem.
“Mirabai Knight's talk about this is one of my all time faves”HN comment, 2021
“Mirabai Knight's talk about this is one of my all time faves”
Mirabai Knight's talk on Plover; inspired a live coding instrument.
Mirabai Knight's talk about this is one of my all time faves: this video Inspired me to try to create a live coding musical instrument based on it: link / link
“Here is a really great talk on the state of doing so, with a fantastic realtime demo near the end.”
Great talk with realtime demo of live-coding via Plover.
Yes! Here is a really great talk on the state of doing so, with a fantastic realtime demo near the end. Mirabai live-codes using her Plover setup and narrates her thought process as she types out each command. this video
Talk on Plover open source stenography enabling very fast typing.
There is an open source stenography project called "Plover". The idea of stenotype is instead of typing individual letters one combines keys to form sillables (or commands), what makes typing blazingly fast (240 WPM in the video below) and is overall a less cramped movement, because after each sillable you can relax instead of keeping muscles tensed for each letter. link Talk: this video Demo: link
“Here's a video by the stenographer half of the duo that started the project”
Video by the stenographer half of the Plover project's founding duo.
Stenography might also be an option: link Here's a video by the stenographer half of the duo that started the project: this video
“You can build your own steno machine with some open-source software and a fancy gaming keyboard.”
Mirabai Knight explains Plover and DIY steno on a gaming keyboard.
Court reporters are required to type at 240WPM with zero mistakes, or they lose their court reporting license. You can teach yourself to use a stenography machine. You can build your own steno machine with some open-source software and a fancy gaming keyboard. See this video by Mirabai Knight and the Plover project: this video I wanted to try this but I couldn't stick with it.
“Here's a good PyCon presentation from someone who switched to voice input for programming.”
PyCon talk on switching to voice input for programming.
Here's a good PyCon presentation from someone who switched to voice input for programming. this video I hadn't thought about it until this thread, but one of the biggest barriers for me using it was that we have a really quiet open office, but now that we are WFH...
“Old talk but It's what court reporters use to transcribe at the speed of text”
Old talk on steno as fast text input for someone who cannot speak.
I personally like ibm tts slightly more than Google although it is more expensive. I think Google, but definitely other startups also allow you to train the model to be closer to your voice. Since you might have many recordings of yourself before this, could be cool. Comment if you can't find it and I can look It's none of my business how long term it is, but if it is long term look into stenography, especially open source opensteno and plover. Old talk but this video It's what court reporters use to transcribe at the speed of text but for you it could mean giving text into a tts software at the speed of normal talking. I've only tried it briefly but if you take the time to learn it, you can comfortably get to normal speech speeds with no hang fatigue. It's one of the reasons opensteno is so nice bc it also has cheap steno keyboards which are normally thousands and locked behind industry. Comment if you want more links! I can add when I'm by my computer
“The video in the first result was good”
Good video from prior Plover discussions.
Over the past decade there have been some interesting discussions about Plover on HN link The video in the first result was good: this video
“programming at the speed of thought; vim at 240 wpm”
Plover stenography talk prompting thoughts on learning cost versus speed gain.
programming at the speed of thought; vim at 240 wpm this video I wonder any of the Pycon 2013 participants try to learn plover and what their experiences were, perhaps they even read this topic on HN? I'm already very proficient at dvorak typing (with the regular vim bindings), so I'm not sure if the 30% speed increase would justify taking 3 to 6 months of learning this, it'd be cool for substituting your speech with a text to speech engine, and with openeeg recognition one step closer to cyborghood. It's also nice to just have the skill to transcribe human speech real time and being able to apply for jobs in politics, justice or television. For example, here's an interview with the dutch transcriber in Dutch parliament: link I wonder if the steno chording could be optimized significantly by rearranging the keys and layout in a similar way as dvorak did with qwerty. Perhaps T9/autoexpand with Linux can be just as fast, but it cannot be used blind, can it? link link
“I never knew something like this was possible, very cool.”
Plover talk including Q&A on open source commercial viability.
I never knew something like this was possible, very cool. One (unrelated) part of the Q&A saddens me, the fallacy that an open source project cannot be commercially successful: this video
“To learn Stenography”
Cited as the stenography learning resource the commenter wishes to pursue.
Some things I wish: - I could write on paper and have that sent to a document on the computer as if it was typed out. Something like those digital pens do, but actually ocr the text. - To learn Stenography ( this video )
“with Plover and training you can reach 120-225 wpm on a qwerty keyboard with NKRO capability”
Shows Plover steno reaching speech-level speeds on a regular keyboard.
You can - if 150 wpm is what you speak, with Plover and training you can reach 120-225 wpm on a qwerty keyboard with NKRO capability. But it's indeed steno (on a regular keyboard). With regular strokes and autocomplete you might reach 70 wpm or more this video
“there are some talks by the Open Steno / Plover people”
Talk by Open Steno/Plover people.
Tho it's not the same person, there are some talks by the Open Steno / Plover people, e.g.: this video , e.g. at 6:30 or so (edit: also one on the bottom of the "about" page)
“try Stenographic input¹”
Steno input as an alternative text input method for programmers.
> I imagine writers have it even worse than programmers. Well, I dunno about that. One of the major projects I'm currently working with, has over 130K lines of Clojure (tests excluded), and that is not too big of a project. I'm too lazy to figure out the proper way to count "words" in that project `wc` shows over 5M. In comparison - "War and Peace" [technically] is ten times smaller. Programmers do type a lot. Possibly, way more than writers have to. And that's just code. Have you ever thought about how much typing happens outside of coding? When reviewing PRs, replying to emails, etc. That is why every single programmer must invest into choosing the right keyboard; learning how to maintain a proper posture; maybe learn non-traditional ways to input text - Vim and Emacs keybindings; try Stenographic input¹; Speech recognition², etc. Because when they don't - sooner or later they end up having problems: back and neck pain, headaches, RSI, hemorrhoids. --- ¹ this video ² link
“If you want to type really fast (>200 WPM) and don't mind a VERY steep learning curve”
Steno learning resource for typing over 200 WPM.
There actually is a modern (almost) equivalent of the DataHand called the Azeron gamepad [1], and there are some DIY 3D printed DataHand replicas too [2][3]. If you want to type really fast (>200 WPM) and don't mind a VERY steep learning curve, then getting a $95 Georgi keyboard [4] and learning steno [5] is probably the way to go. [1]: link [2]: link [3]: link [4]: link [5]: this video
“spend a few months learning stenography [2]. That can get you typing at above 200 WPM!”
Steno learning reference for typing above 200 WPM.
If you really want to take the "Learn to type fast" advice to heart you can get a Georgi keyboard [1] and spend a few months learning stenography [2]. That can get you typing at above 200 WPM! (but it does require a significant amount of time to learn) [1] link [2] this video
“Here's a demo of someone writing code with a steno keyboard (54 keystrokes needed vs 143 if you were using QWERTY)”
Demo of writing code with steno using far fewer keystrokes.
It honestly surprises me that the evolution of ergonomic keyboards has been so slow. Sure, we have plenty of split keyboards now, but we don't have any commercially available DataHand-like designs [1]. Watch someone type with a DataHand you'll see that they barely need to move their fingers at all [2]! The best similarly ergonomic designs we have at the moment are a gaming keypad [3] and some DYI projects [4]. [1] link [2] link [3] link [4] link see also link ---- On another note, does anybody know how good steno keyboards tend to be for RSI issues in the long run? I've practiced some steno with a regular keyboard (thanks to plover [5] and Typey Type [6]), but I'd need an actual steno keyboard to continue since I don't have N-key rollover on my current keyboard. The Georgi [7] seems like a good option and I'd imagine that it would be pretty good for ergonomics since it's a split design and also rather small. The only problem is that I'd have to learn steno which will likely take quite some time. Here's a demo of someone writing code with a steno keyboard (54 keystrokes needed vs 143 if you were using QWERTY) [8]. [5] link [6] link [7] link [8] this video
