plover-q-and-a 0.1.0

Legal Q&A (Question and Answer) formatting output for Plover.

Plover Q&A

This Plover extension plugin contains metas for your dictionaries that can assist with Q&A (Question and Answer): the process of recording lines of questioning in a conversation involving multiple people, usually in a legal context.

More information about the concept of Q&A can be found at:

• Platinum Steno Lesson 27 QA video

More information about the creation of, and reasoning behind, the outlines that originally informed this plugin can be found at the following blog post:

• Plover For the Record

Install

Until this plugin is added to the Plover registry, clone from GitHub or using git:

git clone [e-mail]:paulfioravanti/plover-q-and-a.git
cd plover-q-and-a
plover -s plover_plugins install .

Where plover in the command is a reference to your locally installed version of Plover. See the Invoke Plover from the command line page for details on how to create that reference.

[Future] Once this plugin is added to the Plover registry:

1. In the Plover application, open the Plugins Manager (either click the Plugins Manager icon, or from the Tools menu, select Plugins Manager).
2. From the list of plugins, find plover-q-and-a
3. Click "Install/Update"
4. When it finishes installing, restart Plover
5. After re-opening Plover, open the Configuration screen (either click the Configuration icon, or from the main Plover application menu, select Preferences...)
6. Open the Plugins tab
7. Check the box next to plover_q_and_a to activate the plugin

Config and Dictionaries

See the examples directory for example configuration and dictionaries to help you get up and running with using this plugin for Q&A.

Commands

Whenever someone starts speaking, you indicate this by "signing them in", either by name, or marking them as the asker or answerer of a question.

The one thing that may not immediately intuitive about Q&A outline values is that they are responsible for adding a speaker's final sentence punctuation before another speaker starts talking.

They are responsible for marking how the last speaker ended what they said with either:

• a question (default: ?)
• an ending statement (default: .)
• an interruption (default: --)

Therefore, below you will see multiple variations of the same commands to mark how the last speaker ended.

Command arguments in Plover are separated using colons (:). So, when you see a command like {:Q_AND_A:QUESTION:INITIAL}, this means you are running the Q_AND_A command, and giving it two arguments: QUESTION and INITIAL.

Questions

Questions, in the Q&A context, are always asked by lawyers to witnesses.

Question commands start with a QUESTION argument, followed by one of:

• INITIAL
• FOLLOWING_STATEMENT
• FOLLOWING_QUESTION
• INTERRUPTING

Command	Meaning	Suggested Outlines
{:Q_AND_A:QUESTION:INITIAL}	Signs in the first lawyer question asked (no previous answer/statement)	STKPWHR*
{:Q_AND_A:QUESTION:FOLLOWING_STATEMENT}	Ends a witness statement and signs in a lawyer question	STKPWHR,STKPWHR-R
{:Q_AND_A:QUESTION:FOLLOWING_QUESTION}	Ends a witness question and signs in a lawyer question	STKPWHR-F
{:Q_AND_A:QUESTION:INTERRUPTING}	Signs in a lawyer question when they interrupt a witness	STKPWHR-RB

Answers

Answers are always given by witnesses under cross-examination.

Answer commands start with a ANSWER argument, followed by one of:

• FOLLOWING_QUESTION
• FOLLOWING_STATEMENT
• INTERRUPTING

Command	Meaning	Suggested Outlines
{:Q_AND_A:ANSWER:FOLLOWING_QUESTION}	Ends a lawyer question and signs in a witness answer	-FRPBLGTS,H-FRPBLGTS
{:Q_AND_A:ANSWER:FOLLOWING_STATEMENT}	Ends a lawyer's question as a statement, and signs in a witness answer	R-FRPBLGTS
{:Q_AND_A:ANSWER:INTERRUPTING}	Signs in a witness answer when they interrupt a lawyer	WR-FRPBLGTS

No Initial Answer command exists since it would seem that there are never answers given without a question in Q&A.

Named Speakers

Whenever anything is said outside the context of a Q&A cross-examination back and forth (e.g. an opposing lawyer makes an objection etc), everything said by any speaker needs to be specifically signed in using their name (for lawyers) or title (anyone else).

The types of speakers, and their command arguments, recognised by this plugin are:

• Plaintiff Lawyer 1 (PLAINTIFF_1)
• Defense Lawyer 1 (DEFENSE_1)
• Plaintiff Lawyer 2 (PLAINTIFF_2)
• Defense Lawyer 2 (DEFENSE_1)
• The Court [ie the presiding judge] (COURT)
• The Witness (WITNESS)
• The Videographer (VIDEOGRAPHER)
• The Court Reporter (COURT_REPORTER)
• The Clerk (CLERK)
• The Bailiff (BAILIFF)

Speaker commands start with the speaker command argument, followed by one of:

• INITIAL
• FOLLOWING_QUESTION
• FOLLOWING_STATEMENT
• INTERRUPTING

As an example of a set of known speaker commands, the following is a full list of the commands and suggested outlines for The Court:

Command	Meaning	Suggested Outlines
{:Q_AND_A:COURT:INITIAL}	Signs in The Court as the first speaker (no previous speaker)	STPHAOEUFPLT
{:Q_AND_A:COURT:FOLLOWING_QUESTION}	Ends the previous speaker's question and signs in The Court	STPHAO*EUFPLT
{:Q_AND_A:COURT:FOLLOWING_STATEMENT}	Ends the previous speaker's statement and signs in The Court	STPHAOEUFRPLT
{:Q_AND_A:COURT:INTERRUPTING}	Signs in The Court when they interrupt a speaker	STPHAOEUFRPBLT

The following is the set of INITIAL commands and suggested outlines for all of the other known speaker types, who all also have their equivalent commands for FOLLOWING_QUESTION, FOLLOWING_STATEMENT, and INTERRUPTING variations (see the lawyers.json, other-speakers.json and other-speakers-ncra-style.json dictionaries for those commands and their example outlines):

Command	Meaning	Suggested Outlines
{:Q_AND_A:PLAINTIFF_1:INITIAL}	Signs in Plaintiff lawyer 1 as the first speaker	STPHAO
{:Q_AND_A:PLAINTIFF_2:INITIAL}	Signs in Plaintiff lawyer 2 as the first speaker	SKWRAO
{:Q_AND_A:DEFENSE_1:INITIAL}	Signs in Defense lawyer 1 as the first speaker	EUFPLT
{:Q_AND_A:DEFENSE_2:INITIAL}	Signs in Defense lawyer 2 as the first speaker	EURBGS
{:Q_AND_A:WITNESS:INITIAL}	Signs in The Witness as the first speaker	SKWRAOEURBGS,W-PBS/W-PBS
{:Q_AND_A:VIDEOGRAPHER:INITIAL}	Signs in The Videographer as the first speaker	STPHAEUFPLT,SREUD/SREUD
{:Q_AND_A:COURT_REPORTER:INITIAL}	Signs in The Court Reporter as the first speaker	STPHOEUFPLT,RORP/RORP
{:Q_AND_A:CLERK:INITIAL}	Signs in The Clerk as the first speaker	STPHAOEFPLT,KHRERBG/KHRERBG
{:Q_AND_A:BAILIFF:INITIAL}	Signs in The Bailiff as the first speaker	STPHAOUFPLT,PWHR-F/PWHR-F

Bylines

Bylines are used to indicate the lawyer that owns, or is in charge of, the current line of questioning to a witness. Lawyers are the only speakers that get bylines.

Platinum Steno's convention is to output the lawyer's title and surname, all in capital letters, and then sign in a question. This plugin uses that convention as the default output (but this can be changed via configuration).

Byline commands start with a BYLINE argument, followed by one of the lawyer type command arguments:

• PLAINTIFF_1
• PLAINTIFF_2
• DEFENSE_1
• DEFENSE_2

Then, followed by one of the following arguments:

• INITIAL
• FOLLOWING_STATEMENT
• FOLLOWING_QUESTION
• INTERRUPTING

The following is a full list of the byline commands and suggested outlines for Plaintiff Lawyer 1 (see the lawyers.json example dictionary for the equivalent example byline commands and suggested outlines for the other lawyer types):

Command	Meaning	Suggested Outlines
{:Q_AND_A:BYLINE:PLAINTIFF_1:INITIAL}	Signs in Plaintiff Lawyer 1's byline (no previous answer/statement)	STPHAO*
{:Q_AND_A:BYLINE:PLAINTIFF_1:FOLLOWING_STATEMENT}	Ends the previous speaker's statement and signs in Plaintiff Lawyer 1's byline	STPHAO*R
{:Q_AND_A:BYLINE:PLAINTIFF_1:FOLLOWING_QUESTION}	Ends the previous speaker's question and signs in Plaintiff Lawyer 1's byline	STPHAO*F
{:Q_AND_A:BYLINE:PLAINTIFF_1:INTERRUPTING}	Signs in Plaintiff Lawyer 1's byline when they interrupt a speaker	STPHAO*RB

Immediate Responses

Immediate Response commands can be considered optional helpers: they are not needed to perform Q&A, but if ever you find that common responses or phrases come up immediately after a speaker switch during Q&A, this plugin provides commands that can help you stroke them a bit quicker.

For example, some common words and phrases that begin an answer from witnesses could be:

• Affirmative statements: "Yes.", "Yes, sir.", "Yeah.", "Correct.", "Right.", "Sure.", "Uh-huh." etc
• Negative statements: "No.", "No, sir." etc
• Unsure statements: "I don’t know." etc

Likewise, after witness statements, lawyers could say things like:

• Answer acknowledgements: "Okay.", "All right." etc
• Question versions of those acknowledgements: "Okay?", "All right?" etc

Following these responses either side could either:

• Yield control back to the other speaker
• Elaborate further

It is these two types of scenarios, after either a question or answer speaker switch, that this plugin provides commands for.

Immediate Response commands piggy-back off the existing Question and Answer FOLLOWING_STATEMENT and FOLLOWING_QUESTION commands, but add one of the following arguments:

• ELABORATE_AFTER
• YIELD_AFTER

Following that, you specify the word or phrase you want to use.

Some examples of using these commands could be the following (see the immediate-responses.json for more examples):

Command	Meaning	Suggested Outlines
{:Q_AND_A:QUESTION:FOLLOWING_STATEMENT:ELABORATE_AFTER:Okay}	Ends witness statement, signs in lawyer question, then outputs statement "Okay."	STKPWHR-BG
{:Q_AND_A:QUESTION:FOLLOWING_STATEMENT:YIELD_AFTER:Okay}	Ends witness statement, signs in lawyer question, outputs statement "Okay.", then signs in answer	STKPWHR*BG
{:Q_AND_A:ANSWER:FOLLOWING_QUESTION:ELABORATE_AFTER:I don't know}	Ends a lawyer question, signs in a witness answer, then outputs statement "I don't know."	KWROEFRPBLGTS
{:Q_AND_A:ANSWER:FOLLOWING_QUESTION:YIELD_AFTER:I don't know}	Ends a lawyer question, signs in a witness answer, outputs statement "I don't know.", then signs in question	KWRO*EFRPBLGTS

Development

Clone from GitHub or using git:

git clone [e-mail]:paulfioravanti/plover-q-and-a.git
cd plover-q-and-a

Python Version

Plover's Python environment currently uses version 3.9 (see Plover's workflow_context.yml to confirm the current version).

So, in order to avoid unexpected issues, use your runtime version manager to make sure your local development environment also uses Python 3.9.x.

Testing

Tests in this plugin were created with Pytest. Run them with the following command:

pytest

Linting

Attempts have been made to have at least some kind of code quality baseline with Pylint. Run the linter over the codebase with the following command:

pylint plover_q_and_a

Testing Changes

After making any code changes, install the plugin into Plover with the following command:

plover -s plover_plugins install .

Where plover in the command is a reference to your locally installed version of Plover. See the Invoke Plover from the command line page for details on how to create that reference.