plover-tapey-tape 0.0.4

Paper tape with extra information

Tapey Tape

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 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.

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.

Instead of displaying the paper tape in a window, Tapey Tape outputs it to a text 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 can install it from PyPI using the command

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

(The path might be slightly different if you’re on Windows. For more detailed instructions, please refer to the Manually Installing Plugins page on the Plover Wiki.)

To update:

plover -s plover_plugins install --upgrade plover-tapey-tape

Alternatively, you can use Git:

git clone https://github.com/rabbitgrowth/plover-tapey-tape
plover -s plover_plugins install -e plover-tapey-tape

and update with git pull.

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 behaviour of this plugin by creating a JSON configuration file named tapey_tape.json in Plover’s configuration directory (see above). (If you don’t create the file or don’t specify certain options, the default values will be used.) The available options are:

• "output_file": an absolute filepath specifying the file to output to. ~ is expanded to the home directory. Defaults to tapey_tape.txt in Plover’s configuration directory.
• "bar_character": the character used to draw the hesitation bar. Defaults to "+".
• "bar_max_width": the maximum number of characters drawn. Defaults to 5.
• "bar_time_unit": the number of seconds each character represents. Defaults to 0.2.
• "bar_threshold": a constant number of seconds to subtract from the hesitation time of each stroke. (In other words, how long to wait before the clock starts ticking.) This can be used to hide the bars for fast strokes so that the bars for the slow strokes stand out more visually. Defaults to 0.
• "bar_alignment": either "left" or "right" indicating whether the bar should be left-aligned or right-aligned. Defaults to "right".
• "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 configuration that stretches the hesitation bar to twice its default width:

{
    "bar_max_width": 10,
    "bar_time_unit": 0.1
}

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.