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Ask HN: Has anyone tried adapting a court reporter keyboard for writing code?

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Re: Ask HN: Has anyone tried adapting a court reporter keyboard for writing code?

#3
IANACR, but I would think it's not practical, in that the stenotype keyboard (the official term for the keyboard used by court reporters) is used to record the phonetic _sounds_ of what is being spoken, rather than the actual words. These phonetic codes do not resemble anything approximating the actual words they represent.

Also, computer source code (whatever the language) typically contains variable names which often are (a) typically case-sensitive, and (b) abbreviated or even single characters. And even the basic syntax of the chosen language may not be easily capturable via phonetic sounds, what with open and closing parentheses, curly braces, square brackets, etc., and compound reserved words with prefixes (such as #foreach in Velocity template language).

Again, IANACR, but I don't see how it could possibly work...

Re: Ask HN: Has anyone tried adapting a court reporter keyboard for writing code?

#4
This doesn’t really answer your question but I was on Jury Duty recently and was disappointed to learn that the stenographer was using a normal QWERTY keyboard and boring Dell computer. It seems that they used special software however that was connected to an audio feed with some recall ability.

That being said there is some [support for stenography in the QMK programmable keyboard firmware](https://docs.qmk.fm/features/stenography). I’m not sure how widespread its use is.

Re: Ask HN: Has anyone tried adapting a court reporter keyboard for writing code?

#6
The special phrase you want is "chord"

A stenographer's keyboard is a special kind of chord keyboard for spoken English.

There are other kinds of chord keyboards, but look into those.

For example:

- https://www.charachorder.com/

- https://github.com/davidphilipbarr/Sweep

Related:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30515912

Re: Ask HN: Has anyone tried adapting a court reporter keyboard for writing code?

#7
post #3

IANACR, but I would think it's not practical, in that the stenotype keyboard (the official term for the keyboard used by court reporters) is used to record the phonetic _sounds_ of what is being spoken, rather than the actual words. These phonetic codes do not resemble anything approximating the actual words they represent. Also, computer source code (whatever the language) typically contains variable names which oft…

I seem to remember reading once that what is typed by a stenographer is also only meaningful to them. And therefore must be transcribed into English later by the same stenographer.

Can anyone here confirm that?

Re: Ask HN: Has anyone tried adapting a court reporter keyboard for writing code?

#10
post #8

I can already type on a QWERTY keyboard way faster than I can think. That's one reason I haven't adopted a Dvorak habit. Most court reporters use software nowadays that renders their special stenotype skills obsolete.

Dvorak is much more comfortable than qwerty, in my opinion. I never actually cared about speed, it just feels better.
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