Hardware Showcase

Did you know the Plover Discord has a #hardware-showcase channel? It's pretty dang cool. Here's a recent favorite, from user aarondot:

My "portable" learning setup--geonix rev 2.5 with custom keycaps from yuzu, Bluetooth into a retroid pocket flip 2 running dotterel

I especially like the example sentences. Already a pretty far distance from "the ape sat at the top step", which I believe was the first complete sentence I ever learned to write in steno school.

Script Sending

Sometimes people ask me how I deal with prescripted mmaterial if I just use Plover, which doesn't have a built-in script sending feature, rather than commercial steno software, which does. The answer? I use a Kinesis foot pedal, Streamtext, and Vim. I have a one-pedal system I keep in my bag all the time, which sends text line by line when I type:

:map F ^v$"+yj

in Vim. It has two sockets, one set to auto-return after sending a line (for song lyrics) and one set to add a space after sending a line (for speeches and other prescripted prose). I also have a three pedal unit I use for theater captioning, which lets me send one, two, or three lines at a time, depending on the rate of the dialogue. It all works pretty smoothly, whether or not I'm running Plover. Who needs proprietary software anyway, right?

Steno on the Bus

I'm doing a five-week online writing intensive and some of the class sprints are happening at the end of my workday, while I'm coming home on the bus. Fortunately with the BYOK plus my Asterisk with electric foam, I was able to sprint along with everyone else! Woohoo!

Plover v5.4.2 released!

Plover v5.4.2 has been released!
Bugfixes
macOS
Fix crash when clicking the menu bar icon on macOS 27. (#1874)

Asterisk + Javelin + BYOK

As an update to last week's post, where I got my Jarne Blade working on the BYOK via Bluetooth, jganiyu has now developed new firmware for the Asterisk that enables it to write to the BYOK via USB! Very exciting!!

Steno on the BYOK!

The latest firmware on the BYOK single purpose writing device works with the Jarne Blade via Bluetooth!! I haven't managed to get any of my wired Javelin devices like the Uni or Asterisk working, and my Jarne was out of charge, but this is huge for me! I'm starting a writing intensive in mid-October to write about a dozen new scenes for my novel after the dev edit I did last summer, and being able to use the Jarne Blade with my BYOK is gonna be so fantastic!

Steno Conference Meetups

I just learned of an open steno meetup that happened at the MRMCD conference in Germany earlier this month! How cool! Anyone know of any others??