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Backtrack-Free Cursive

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11–20 of 133 posts

Re: Backtrack-Free Cursive

#11
post #8

For anyone interested in optimising this further, orthographic (letter-based) cursive shorthand systems are the answer. I personally only know part of the Melin system[1], but there are variants designed for English as the primary language too. (Melin is of course perfectly usable with English also.) The flow of a cursive shorthand system is unmatched by anything else. I highly recommend learning enougnh to experienc…

> The drawback with more phonetic systems like Gregg is that one has to learn entirely new ways of spelling words.

The point of the phonetic systems is that you don't have to ‘spell’ words at all: what you say is what you write.

(Then there are briefs, of course, but those are for additional benefit.)

Re: Backtrack-Free Cursive

#12
post #4

> Only й and э require two strokes Wouldn't the ф as well? > [for the x], I draw two mirrored c’s Isn't that what everyone is doing, or are we Frenchmen the exception? For reference if the author reads this, we write the latin x exactly like the cyrillic х, i.e. reverse c, bottom-left to top-right diagonal, normal c.

> Isn't that what everyone is doing, or are we Frenchmen the exception? > For reference if the author reads this, we write the latin x exactly like the cyrillic х, i.e. reverse c, bottom-left to top-right diagonal, normal c.

I was taught script in the US and Italy as a child, and never learned it like this.

Re: Backtrack-Free Cursive

#13
I have had similar thoughts recently when attending language courses where I write a lot of notes by hand. This problem is exacerbated by umlauts. If the language doesn't have letters like ō (are there any? i only see this letter to represent a sound, never in a word), then the two dots can be replaced with a line and so, I guess, the lowercase T technique from the blog post could be adapted to it. I think I know what I am gonna do after work today

Re: Backtrack-Free Cursive

#14

You only need 1 backtrack if you do the dots and crosses after you've written the word

That’s addresses in the blog post:

> One way to remove backtracking is to lift the pen immediately instead of waiting until the end of the word, as if doing italic calligraphy. Pen lifts alleviate the mental queue problem and give a chance to readjust the palm, but they break the writing flow.

Re: Backtrack-Free Cursive

#16
post #8

For anyone interested in optimising this further, orthographic (letter-based) cursive shorthand systems are the answer. I personally only know part of the Melin system[1], but there are variants designed for English as the primary language too. (Melin is of course perfectly usable with English also.) The flow of a cursive shorthand system is unmatched by anything else. I highly recommend learning enougnh to experienc…

What a rabbithole ;) TIL about "Stiefography". I wonder how useful this is. I remember math lectures - typically, our prof used the white^H^H^H^H^Hchalkboard, so I could just write down things fast enough.

There is evidence that typing is actively bad for memory rentention compared to writing things down with a pen. I wonder where Stenography falls in this continuum.

Re: Backtrack-Free Cursive

#18
This is unrelated to the main thesis of the article, but worth pointing out as too many people equate the Cyrillic script with Russian language.

The Cyrillic script was invented in Bulgaria (during the First Bulgarian Empire), and was used to write Bulgarian language, creating a huge literary corpus, long before it began spreading to Kievan Rus. The Russian language itself comes from Old Bulgarian / Old Church Slavonic, as does Serbian and other "Slavic" languages.

And no, Bulgaria was never part of Russia nor the Soviet Union.

Re: Backtrack-Free Cursive

#19
This is the kind of thing that makes cursive painful to read. The `i` and `j` in this script are harder to quickly lex, and the `t` (especially in the `tt` ligature) with the added loop flourish diverges sufficiently from a standard `t` to make it hard to decipher in running text.

In text, as in code, I prefer to optimize for easy reading rather than faster writing.

Re: Backtrack-Free Cursive

#20

I have had similar thoughts recently when attending language courses where I write a lot of notes by hand. This problem is exacerbated by umlauts. If the language doesn't have letters like ō (are there any? i only see this letter to represent a sound, never in a word), then the two dots can be replaced with a line and so, I guess, the lowercase T technique from the blog post could be adapted to it. I think I know wha…

In German the Umlaut started as a quicker way to write ae, oe and ue. Perhaps develop your ideas from there?
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