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lambdadog / plover_czech

Stenography system for writing Czech in Plover.
GNU General Public License v3.0
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Would like to learn about where this came from #1

Open Peliia opened 3 years ago

Peliia commented 3 years ago

Hello,

as a native Czech who got into Plover about a month or two ago, I was naturally curious about typing steno in my native tonque. Unfortunately, I found only that in an official capacity, Czech machine stenography simply does not exist as the Institute responsible for research into that field gave up quietly after a few years...

And so I was quite piqued in interest when I noticed at random that this repo exists, and that this and another Czech steno layout are displayed on this page!

But how can there be a layout without an underlying theory? This is why I open this issue, to hopefully reach out to @lambdadog to learn more about where did this layout come from to perhaps lead me to whatever groundwork was laid out for Czech machine steno before it was seemingly given up on. I would be ever more happy to stand corrected and hear there is indeed a theory to lean onto to develop a dictionary!

lambdadog commented 3 years ago

I'll have to look into my discord chat history, I was working with a native Czech speaker on this project.

IIRC they had dug up some fairly obscure documentation of machine stenography for Czech, but I'll get back to you if I can find the actual sources involved.

lambdadog commented 3 years ago

I think the original discussion on the theory took place in a server I'm no longer in actually since it's not in our DM history, so I've just linked them this issue and will let them field it.

slampisko commented 3 years ago

Hello @Peliia, thank you for your interest, here is some information about the creation and state of the Czech system.

As another native Czech that got into Plover about 4 years ago I was also curious, and my research led me to this document about the fate of Czech steno, and that led me to materials from Ing. Jaroslav Junek. I learned that a system was invented, but put to rest because it required the creation of expensive specialized hardware – a concern that is greatly reduced when Plover comes in the picture, so I was excited to try and use it.

About 2 years ago I went to the Státní okresní archiv Jablonec nad Nisou where I reserved for study everything they had from him, namely the following 6 titles:

Soustava strojového těsnopisu - 1. díl, 2. díl Učebnice strojového těsnopisu - 1. díl, 2. díl Slovník strojového těsnopisu A - P, R-Ž

Unfortunately due to the wishes of the creator (who is still alive, but I was not able to get his phone number) I was unable to make digital copies or borrow these books to study at home (it's a 4-hour drive for me).

In the 6 hours I had with the materials, I was able to derive the keyboard layout and some basic and moderately advanced rules about the system. I was planning to start learning to write with it, so I mentioned it in the Plover Discord and enlisted the help of @lambdadog who generously created a Plover plugin for me and helped me put it in use, but unfortunately we ran into a bug in Plover (this one) that prevented me from using the layout. Since then, I was busy with other stuff, but I've noticed some promising pull requests in the 2 years since that might mean that the bug is now fixed. I never found the motivation or discipline to try it again, but now that you made this issue I might :)

If you want chat more, you can find me on the Plover discord under the same handle as here.