Just learned that there are two different things, stenotype, which uses a special keyboard (mostly in the US?), and stenography, a form of hand writing, which some of the comments refer to. Interesting. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stenotype https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shorthand
Ask HN: Anyone Here Using Stenography
21–30 of 34 posts
Re: Ask HN: Anyone Here Using Stenography
#22I sometimes use stenographic handwriting, which is different from the question. One insight I had is that swiping on the iPad is fundamentally faster than stenography, because the information density of these curves is higher: you have more context sensitive starting point and swirls. The only thing that is even faster is speech recognition (google > siri) ... and maybe the stenography OP asked about, which is probab…
Re: Ask HN: Anyone Here Using Stenography
#23Re: Ask HN: Anyone Here Using Stenography
#24No I don't like it because it's heavily encouraged that every stenographer heavily modify their dictionary, making it harder to learn. There's a million and one different theories, it's somewhat strange.
Afaik stenography has some standard dictionaries that you can start out with. But as you said it's expected to modify it because everyone writes different kinds of texts and stenography is all about optimizing for speed.
Re: Ask HN: Anyone Here Using Stenography
#25I'm a fast qwerty typist (135wpm) who looked into steno but ultimately decided not to put the effort in to learning. I was surprised to discover that learning steno theory is much like learning a new foreign language due to the use of steno word dictionaries, and it takes most learners a few years of full-time study to get fast. (Of course, like with foreign languages, a small percentage of learners are able to go mu…
Any advice on how to get from "fast for a normal" to "fast for a computer person" (like you)? I'm around 90wpm on a good day, but for the life of me can't break ~100. Always used to piss me off... my ex typed ~120 while I typed ~70wpm. Both of us engineers. Completely demolished me anytime we fought over chat. ;)
[1] Sort of an obscure one, but there's a good reason to learn it! http://mkweb.bcgsc.ca/carpalx/
[2] A warning though, you may become addicted to these games :)
Re: Ask HN: Anyone Here Using Stenography
#26I love the idea of steno-like keyboards such as the gerkin, but I haven’t been able to go below 40 keys on a split keyboard myself without significantly changing my tools. My main editor for example (vscode) heavily uses modifier based shortcuts and with less keys the overlap of modifiers and normal characters is too high and becomes confusing for me. I already have basic characters mapped to modifiers, ie click for…
And I don't know how flexible VS Code is in terms of keybindings, but I like to use Space as a leader key for many of my additions. So instead of e.g. Ctrl-x I press Space followed by x. It can be still just as fast with some muscle memory.
Re: Ask HN: Anyone Here Using Stenography
#27Re: Ask HN: Anyone Here Using Stenography
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
Any advice on how to get from "fast for a normal" to "fast for a computer person" (like you)? I'm around 90wpm on a good day, but for the life of me can't break ~100. Always used to piss me off... my ex typed ~120 while I typed ~70wpm. Both of us engineers. Completely demolished me anytime we fought over chat. ;)
If you have some spare time, maybe try learning a new keyboard layout and be intent on learning the right fingering. I never properly learned to use all my fingers on QWERTY, but I picked up Carpalx[1] and with 1h a day of deliberate practice on TypeRacer and keybr.com[2] I managed to get to the same speed I've always typed on QWERTY (~70-90 WPM) after about a week. Since then I haven't really practiced that much and…
Link is dead, but it's in archive.org. Thanks for that! Really cool. I love the idea of using a model driven approach. That link is gold.
Yeah, I considered learning dvorak in the early 2000s, when it was spreading like wildfire through my social group. I decided not too after having several friends gripe about the annoyance of typing on a qwerty keyboard after going dvorak.
But, it's 2021 now. I can't remember the last time I typed on a computer I didn't control! So maybe now it's time to switch to a custom key layout, entirely data driven by sampling my key presses over a few months. :)
Re: Ask HN: Anyone Here Using Stenography
#29I'm a fast qwerty typist (135wpm) who looked into steno but ultimately decided not to put the effort in to learning. I was surprised to discover that learning steno theory is much like learning a new foreign language due to the use of steno word dictionaries, and it takes most learners a few years of full-time study to get fast. (Of course, like with foreign languages, a small percentage of learners are able to go mu…
Any advice on how to get from "fast for a normal" to "fast for a computer person" (like you)? I'm around 90wpm on a good day, but for the life of me can't break ~100. Always used to piss me off... my ex typed ~120 while I typed ~70wpm. Both of us engineers. Completely demolished me anytime we fought over chat. ;)
I imagine it is similar to any other skill though. Practice. I'm sure there are web apps. You'd just have to put in some time each day for a period and you'd improve.
Re: Ask HN: Anyone Here Using Stenography
#30I'm a fast qwerty typist (135wpm) who looked into steno but ultimately decided not to put the effort in to learning. I was surprised to discover that learning steno theory is much like learning a new foreign language due to the use of steno word dictionaries, and it takes most learners a few years of full-time study to get fast. (Of course, like with foreign languages, a small percentage of learners are able to go mu…
I don't touch type as fast as you do (only 80-110wpm) but I too was tempted by the idea of faster typing. I have experimented with several chording keyboards and could never get past 15-20 wpm range. My problem is that I have been typing on QWERTY keyboards for decades and my limiting factor is not my typing speed, but my thinking speed. When coding, I hardly ever can go for more than a couple of minutes before I nee…
Lots of people try out Workman / Dvorak / Colemak, but I see very few top typists using custom keyboard layouts. You can definitely.