plover-tapey-tape 0.0.3

Paper tape with extra information

plover-tapey-tape

plover-tapey-tape is an alternative to Plover’s built-in paper tape. It provides a side-by-side view of strokes and translations as well as some useful extra information.

      |   KP   A              | {}{-|}
   ++ |      H AO E  R        | here
    + |        A  E        S  | *here's  >HAO*ERS
    + |     WH A              | what
      |  T                    | it
 ++++ |      HRAO      B G   Z| look {^s}
   ++ |      HRAO EU   B G    | like
    + |  T P H                | in
    + |    P  RA       B G S  | practice
    + |  T P          P L     | {.}

The bars made up of +s on the left show the hesitation time for each stroke so that you can see which words you struggle with the most.

The hints on the right beginning with > are clippy-style suggestions that show opportunities to write words or phrases more efficiently. In the above example, it’s telling me that the two strokes I used for “here’s”, HAOER/AES, can be condensed into one, HAO*ERS.

As you write, the paper tape is written in real time to a file named tapey_tape.txt in Plover’s configuration directory:

• Windows: %USERPROFILE%\AppData\Local\plover
• macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/plover
• Linux: ~/.config/plover

You can review the file afterwards or use a tool like tail -f to get a real-time feed.

Fingerspelling

tapey-tape tries to be clever and treats contiguous fingerspelled strokes as a group, so that when you fingerspell “kvetch” for example, it will only show suggestions for “kvetch”, not sub-words like “vet”, “vetch”, “et”, “etc”, and “etch”.

|   KP   A              | {}{-|}
|      H    E           | he
|             F      S  | was  >>EFS HEFS
|   K      *            | {>}{&k}
| S     R  *            | {>}{&v}
|          *E           | {>}{&e}
|  T       *            | {>}{&t}
|   K   R  *            | {>}{&c}
|      H   *            | {>}{&h}  >KW*EFP
|                  G    | {^ing}
|    PW                 | about
|                   T   | the  >>PW-T
|    P  RAO EU       S  | price
|  T P          P L     | {.}

Installation

This plugin is not yet available in Plover’s plugins manager, but for the time being, you should be able to install it with

plover -s plover_plugins install plover-tapey-tape

where plover stands for

• Windows: C:\Program Files (x86)\Open Steno Project\Plover 4.0.0\plover_console.exe
• macOS: /Applications/Plover.app/Contents/MacOS/Plover
• Linux: plover.AppImage

Activation

After you’ve installed this plugin, you have to enable it manually by opening the main Plover window, going to Configure → Plugins, and checking the box next to plover-tapey-tape.

Configuration

You can customize the format of the output by creating a JSON configuration file named tapey_tape.json in Plover’s configuration directory (see above). The available options are:

• "bar_character": the character used to draw the hesitation bar. Defaults to "+".
• "bar_alignment": either "left" or "right" indicating whether the bar should be left-aligned or right-aligned. Defaults to "right".
• "bar_time_unit": the amount of time in seconds each character represents. Defaults to 0.2.
• "bar_max_width": the maximum number of characters drawn. Defaults to 5.
• "line_format": a string template specifying how each line in the output should be formatted. Special codes beginning with % are transformed into different items:

Code	Item	Example
%t	date and time	2020-02-02 12:34:56.789
%b	hesitation bar	+++++
%S	steno	...K.W.R....U.RPB...... (. = space)
%r	raw steno	KWRURPB
%D	definition	yes{,}your Honor
%T	translation	Yes, your Honor
%s	suggestions	>>KWRURPB
%%	an actual %	%

The default format is %b |%S| %D %s:

    %b |          %S           | %D      %s

  ++++ | ST        E   PB      | sten
    ++ | S K W R O             | *steno  >STOEUPB STO*EUPB

Here’s a comparison between %D and %T:

                          %D        %T

|    P H       R        | Mr.{-|}   Mr.
|    PW R O  U  PB      | brown     Brown
|      H  O EU    L   DZ| /         HOEULDZ
|          *            | *         *
|      H  O E     L   DZ| holds     holds
|        A  EU          | a         a
|    P     *    P       | {&P}      P
|      H   *            | {>}{&h}   h
|  TK      *    P       | {&D}      D
|  TK       E      G    | degree    degree
|  T P H                | in        in
|  T P H AO* U R        | {neuro^}  neuro
| S K   RAO EU  PB   S  | science   science
|  T P          P L     | {.}       .

In short, %D is the definition in your dictionary, including commands like {-|} and {.}. %T is the translation by Plover, or the actual characters that are output. (If a stroke is undefined, %D is displayed as /.)

You can additionally specify the minimum width of an item by inserting a number between the % and the letter code. For example, %10r makes the raw steno at least 10 characters wide by padding it with spaces. This can be used to generate a tabular output:

{
    "line_format": "%10r -> %T"
}

-T         -> The
KWEUBG     -> quick
PWROUPB    -> brown
TPOBGS     -> fox
SKWRUFRPZ  -> jumps
OEFR       -> over
-T         -> the
HRAEZ      -> lazy
TKOG       -> dog
TP-PL      -> .

Here’s an example tapey_tape.json that uses fancy Unicode symbols and stretches the hesitation bar to twice its default width:

{
    "bar_character": "░",
    "bar_time_unit": 0.1,
    "bar_max_width": 10,
    "line_format": "%b │%S│ %r → %T"
}

  ░░░░░░░░ │      H  O*E     L     │ HO*EL → Hello
     ░░░░░ │   K W          B G    │ KW-BG → ,
░░░░░░░░░░ │     W   O    R  L   D │ WORLD → world
       ░░░ │  T P           B G    │ TP-BG → !

Note that if you edit tapey_tape.json while Plover is running, you’ll have to restart Plover for the new settings to take effect.

Acknowledgements

The name of this plugin is a tribute to Typey Type, a free resource for learning steno.

This plugin is heavily inspired by plover-clippy.