Hey everyone - let me do a bit of explaining before I get to the juicy stuff.
My wrists and fingers began giving me trouble a few months back (I'm sure the story has appeared a million times on these forums) and so I ditched my Model M for a kinesis advantage in an attempt to ward off what might have become RSI. I would have purchased a maltron, but I'm too poor. The maltron a big feature the kinesis doesn't; it own uber ergonomic layout which I wanted to use. So I fired up autohotkey and before I knew it I was running malt. Then I discovered that L was in the worst place possible, over the pinky. I attempted to fix the layout with a few small modifications and asked for advice.
https://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=62065.0 In the end I didn't have the time to generate and test a new layout and opted to hit L with my ring finger or swap it with another letter.
This worked well enough, I was even able to use most of the training course designed by Maltron. But I was annoyed at my slow speeds - you might have converted to colemak or dvorak at some point and can understand what it is like to type like a snail.
But what really bothered me was that in the end, after I had been on Malt for a few years I would never really type that much faster than on QWERTY or any other layout. So I, being a perfectionist, went looking and found a miracle called Plover that seemed to answer all of my problems. Lightening fast speed and better ergonomic than are possible with a normal layout.
http://plover.stenoknight.com/For those of you who don't already know it's Open Source stenography software and runs on all three major operating systems. I am a decent QWERTY typist at speeds of about 100wpm so I believed I would be able to achieve a decent speed with Plover. I also ran through the very well made Learn Plover! ebook (
https://sites.google.com/site/ploverdoc/) and believe that I would be able to type very quickly within only a few months of practice. A few demonstrations from the founder of the project on YouTube were enough to convince me that Steno was the thing. I then gave it a shot on my old alps board and found that it really was THE ****.
But then I ran into a wall, my old alps board was just 8NKRO and I could do any large words on it. Plover allows the user to use Stenography on a normal keyboard, but to properly use the software the keyboard must have true NKRO, just just the usual 2KRO or 6KRO that most keyboards support via usb. I was fine with using a PS/2 keyboard, I even prefer it as I dislike USBs for a number of reasons.
The problem was that all of the properly ergonomic keyboards the project suggested were either too expensive or required skills that I did not have. I did not want to use a DAS or other common NKRO keyboard that would screw with my hands again.
I don't have the skill to put together an ErgoDox after waiting the six months for it to arrive and a Stenoboard.
http://stenoboard.com/ At least the stenoboard would come within the month of ordering.
I also was wonder about the new Matias split keyboard (
http://matias.ca/ergopro/pc/). I know that the keyboard supports 6NKRO, but I fantasized that I might be able to use an adapter to fix this..... The keyboard isn't even out yet, I'm an alps fan and can see myself using steno on it with much issue.
So now for the barrage of questions:
Does anyone have long term experience with Plover, if so what keyboard did you use, how long did it take you to get to 100 wpm and then later to 200 wpm and does the software work as promised? I got a short show on YouTube and a quick test myself, but I have yet to really work through Plover or take a look at the code.
Is anyone here a professional or hobbyist stenographer who can give me a few tips or advice?
Has anyone used an adapter with a Matias keyboard to achieve NKRO before - this would be a good predictor of if it would be possible to do so on their new model.
Does anyone know of any ergonomic boards that are NKRO (even non-mechanical) or ones that can be converted via an adapter? Keyboards that have 20NKRO are also a possible option.
I also imaged taking two 60% boards and building an ergonomic stand for them, but that is going a little too far - not to mention whether Plover would be compatible with multiple keyboards at once.
Thanks