Wednesday, March 4, 2020

A Pattern for Stroking Symbols with Plover

Unless I use them on a very regular basis, I have trouble remembering the strokes for many of the symbols and punctuation. I figure that if they follow a pattern they should be easier to remember. Awhile back on the Plover Discord Elzed suggested such a pattern for (), [], and {}. I've extended it to include many more symbols.

The idea is that each symbol has a pair of strokes. The first stroke of a pair has -FPLT in the right hand, and the second stroke has -RBGS in the right hand. The -FPLT strokes allow a leading space before the symbol but supress the trailing space. Strokes with -RBGS supress the leadings space but allow a trailing space. This make it easy to do such things as (this) without having to fiddle with spaces. The left hand part of each stroke is either mnemonic or has a memorable shape to help me remember it. Here is the JSON file to show how it's done.

{
"KPH-FPLT": "/{^}",
"KPH-RBGS": "{^}/",
"KW-FPLT": "{\"^}",
"KW-RBGS": "{^}\"",
"KWHR-FPLT": "{=^}",
"KWHR-RBGS": "{^=}",
"P-FPLT": "%{^}",
"P-RBGS": "{^}%",
"PHR-FPLT": "+{^}",
"PHR-RBGS": "{^}+",
"PR-FPLT": "({^}",
"PR-RBGS": "{^})",
"PRAFPLT": "<{^}",
"PRARBGS": "{^}>",
"PW-FPLT": "|{^}",
"PW-RBGS": "{^}|",
"PWR-FPLT": "[{^}",
"PWR-RBGS": "{^}]",
"SKP-FPLT": "&{^}",
"SKP-RBGS": "{^}&",
"SKWR-FPLT": "_{^}",
"SKWR-RBGS": "{^}_",
"STRAFPLT": "*{^}",
"STRARBGS": "{^}*",
"T-FPLT": "'{^}",
"T-RBGS": "{^}'",
"THR-FPLT": "~{^}",
"THR-RBGS": "{^}~",
"TK-FPLT": "${^}",
"TK-RBGS": "{^}$",
"TKPW-FPLT": "@{^}",
"TKPW-RBGS": "{^}@",
"TPH-FPLT": "#{^}",
"TPH-RBGS": "{^}#",
"TPR-FPLT": "{\\{^}",
"TPR-RBGS": "{^\\}}",
"TW-FPLT": "`{^}",
"TW-RBGS": "{^}`",
"TWR-FPLT": "{\\^}",
"TWR-RBGS": "{^}\\",
"WR-FPLT": "-{^}",
"WR-RBGS": "{^}-"
}

Here's the logic behind the left sides of the strokes:

KPH the shape looks a bit like /
KW q for quote "
KWHR eQuaL for =
P Percent for %
PHR PLus for +
PR PaRen for parentheses ( )
PRA the shape looks a bit like < >
PW the shape looks a bit like |
PWR BRacket for [ ]
SKP the Plover brief for "and ", for &
SKWR the shape looks a bit like _
STRA STAR for *
T Tick for '
THR TiLda for ~
TK Dollar for $
TKPW the shape is reminiscent of @
TPH Number for #
TPR FRench bracket for { }
TW the shape looks a bit like `
TWR the shape looks a bit like \
WR the shape is reminiscent of -

I'm not saying this is the final word, just that it's what I'm using right now. The file is available at  https://github.com/CharleyShattuck/Plover-Dictionaries  and is called symbols.json.

See  https://github.com/openstenoproject/plover/wiki/Dictionary-Format  for help understanding the JSON file above.