Michela, Italian chorded keyboard

[morinted]

The Italian senate uses Michela, the piano-like chorded machine

https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macchina_Michela

The theory, the dictionary sample which I have is copyrighted and I cannot share, seems to be mostly orthographic, but is implemented just with prefixes:

{\*\cxs IUencf}per\cxds 

However I'm told that traditionally it's like the English system and the dictionaries follow a phonetic theory and are assembled by hand.

Layout:

Theory booklet:

Michela in brief

This system was discussed in and requires #742 to be completed.

[GBriotti]

Hi Ted, I'm not sure if this is the right place, but this is an updated version of the booklet.

The Michela stenotype System (ENG) (h).pdf

And this is an update imagine for keyboard coding:

[ossossosso]

Hi Ted. I've bought the manual for the Italian Michela System. I already know and use the Melani system (syllabic method), but I'm really interested also to learn indeed this phonetic one. I'd like to compare and understand if one can takes advantages from the other and viceversa, and use the more comfortable for me.

Just reading the manual without practice on the machine is not easy to do. Even if I've converted in Plover the layout to the Michela one, as you said, without a dictionary is pretty useless.

I really don't know how to get it because out of the Senate the system is not used. Maybe the only solution would be to buy Eclipse... Anyway, can I ask you how do you have the dictionary? Can be purchased as I did with the Melani dictionary? Or maybe could be shared for studying purpose.

Thank you in advance for any information.

[marnanel]

I might have lost some context here. What's the difference between Michela and Melani? Do they both use a musical keyboard?

IIRC the system you described on the bug tracker was Michela. Am I correct?

Are you looking for an English dictionary adapted for the Michela or Melani system? (rather than a Plover driver to read from musical keyboards, at this stage.)

In the Italian political system, do you have a senator representing you who might be able to tell us more?

peace, Marn

On August 22, 2017 9:59:47 AM GMT+01:00, ossossosso notifications@github.com wrote:

Hi Ted. I've bought the manual for the Italian Michela System. I already know and use the Melani system (syllabic method), but I'm really interested also to learn indeed this phonetic one. I'd like to compare and understand if one can takes advantages from the other and viceversa, and use the more comfortable for me.

Just reading the manual without practice on the machine is not easy to do. Even if I've converted in Plover the layout to the Michela one, as you said, without a dictionary is pretty useless.

I really don't know how to get it because out of the Senate the system is not used. Maybe the only solution would be to buy Eclipse... Anyway, can I ask you how do you have the dictionary? Can be purchased as I did with the Melani dictionary? Or maybe could be shared for studying purpose.

Thank you in advance for any information.

-- You are receiving this because you are subscribed to this thread. Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub: https://github.com/openstenoproject/plover/issues/780#issuecomment-323964264

-- Sent from my Android device with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity.

[morinted]

I’m working on acquiring a free dictionary and learning materials for the Michela system in Italian. The support within Plover is dependent on us finishing our plugins implementation with Plover version 4. Definitely keep watching the GitHub issue, I’ll update as I go. My personal life has been pretty busy lately so I haven’t had too much time to develop on Plover.On Aug 22, 2017, at 9:10 AM, Thomas Thurman notifications@github.com wrote:I might have lost some context here. What's the difference between Michela and Melani? Do they both use a musical keyboard?

IIRC the system you described on the bug tracker was Michela. Am I correct?

Are you looking for an English dictionary adapted for the Michela or Melani system? (rather than a Plover driver to read from musical keyboards, at this stage.)

In the Italian political system, do you have a senator representing you who might be able to tell us more?

peace, Marn

On August 22, 2017 9:59:47 AM GMT+01:00, ossossosso notifications@github.com wrote:

Hi Ted. I've bought the manual for the Italian Michela System. I already know and use the Melani system (syllabic method), but I'm really interested also to learn indeed this phonetic one. I'd like to compare and understand if one can takes advantages from the other and viceversa, and use the more comfortable for me.

Just reading the manual without practice on the machine is not easy to do. Even if I've converted in Plover the layout to the Michela one, as you said, without a dictionary is pretty useless.

I really don't know how to get it because out of the Senate the system is not used. Maybe the only solution would be to buy Eclipse... Anyway, can I ask you how do you have the dictionary? Can be purchased as I did with the Melani dictionary? Or maybe could be shared for studying purpose.

Thank you in advance for any information.

-- You are receiving this because you are subscribed to this thread. Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub: https://github.com/openstenoproject/plover/issues/780#issuecomment-323964264

-- Sent from my Android device with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity.

—You are receiving this because you authored the thread.Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub, or mute the thread.

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[ossossosso]

Michela is a phonetic system, similar to the English one. Melani is a syllabic system. Michela was born more then 100 years ago (if I'm not wrong) and it is monstly used in the senate and other few public istitutions. Melani was born later, around 80s. It is used by all italian companies for real time subtitling and Court or city council transcription. After the success for the Italian language, this system has been also used for the spanish (and maybe portugese) language. Michela system use a machine similar to a piano instrument. Actually I don't know if you can buy for personal use. I don't think so. Melani system use the same as american machines.

[keyb-cutter]

Actually they are both syllabic system, but Melani is an orthographic system (like the Velotype). Also if it is implemented on a US Stenotype keyboard Melani system totally differs from the english steno theory (which is phonetic) because the words are represented as they are written and the operator, writing the word endings, indicates also the space at the end of each word. Besides Michela is a phonetic system (historically was the first steno phonetic keyboard to appear on the market in 1876) and so nowadays it is used by the italian Senate with a CAT system and translating dictionaries (like Stenotype, Grand Jean and Palantype). Anyway, due to the fact that Italian is a transparent language (grapheme=phoneme) it's very easy to develop an orthographic theory for the Michela and use it in the same way of Melani and Velotype.

[ossossosso]

My mistake. I wrote "syllabic" but I mean orthographic. Both are syllabic.

[Sillabix]

Anyway at the moment all the Michela manuals on the market are outdated and quite useless for computer aided transcription because they were written before the application of TE and the advent of the realtime theory for the Michela-MIDI keyboard in 2002. A new updated manual with the conflict free theory should be published in the near future.

[morinted]

@Sillabix wrote:

Bank one and bank four are used to write decades and numbers so you can write every number up to 99. If you have to write multiple numbers of 3 digits you write the first number in bank 4 then the other two in bank one and four. If the digits are four you write the first two and then the last two and so on. Then we use to write some words to mean hundreds thousands, million, billion etc, like "cent", "mila" for 000, "mion" for 000.000 and "miar" for 000.000.000. We don't need to reverse numbers cause with bank one and four you can write double digits in every order. About doubling number I discovered this trick reading the Plover lessons and I surely will adopt it. About currency symbols we don't use them at all because our reports are a bit formal and we tend not to use any symbol. Anyway, we don't use to write digits everytime. Sometime we need to write out numbers, like when they refer to days, week etc. We could never write in our reports "4 days" or "7 years" but always "four days" and "seven years".

Also I'm starting to use the "U" key as a number bar, to avoid that numbers could come out when you make a misstroke and miss to write the vowel in bank 3.

[morinted]

Benoit Pierre has made good progress in implementing the MIDI keyboard protocol as well as the Michela layout. Once the next weekly is out the plugins will likely be available for Michela users to try.

[morinted]

"Systems" do get their own set of orthography rules, and we can also supply an Italian word list for spelling look up.

It would be nice to have the list of orthography rules for implementation into the system.

[arxanas]

Is the plugin at https://github.com/benoit-pierre/plover_michela in a workable state?

[Sillabix]

Yes, it works. I'm still waiting for the Italian dictionary conversion from rtf to json.

Il 20 feb 2018 08:52, "Waleed Khan" notifications@github.com ha scritto:

Is the plugin at https://github.com/benoit-pierre/plover_michela in a workable state?

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[Sillabix]

Here it is the latest plugin upgrade with the steno dictionary (a big thanks to Benoit Pierre).

https://github.com/benoit-pierre/plover_michela

[benoit-pierre]

Closing, as we now have everything needed for Michela support.

[Sillabix]

The instructions for building a DIY keyboard were also missing. Here is a small tutorial I made. I hope you enjoy it.

https://youtu.be/q9Y9jtOB7G0