cursors

25 Nov 2020

I just realized: using alt to mouse-select multiple cursors in VS Code does not trigger the OSL to fall back. Is that a task I do with the dictionary instead? No, dictionary can’t help there. HMM!
Perhaps a key on the symbol layer that does a TO(BASE). yup, that works!
I’ve also printed out some cheat-sheets, and now I guess nothing is stopping me from developing some muscle memory…

I’ve started a tiny bit of coding with steno. It’s alive! Starting to think about building my own “single stroke commands” dictionary, but because it’s so many different chords, thinking of building a generator that takes an input of all the chords for each modifier (plus a few others for nav/cursor control), and then it prints out all the hundreds of permutations! Some things I’m learning about dictionary entries as I do this:

• a / is present to delineate strokes

• a - is present to delineate left-hand vs right-hand, but only

  1. if there are no left-hand keys in the chord
  2. if writing it down without a - would show ambiguity (HRPB is either HR-PB “license”, or H-RPB “hit-and-run”)
  3. if there is no ambiguity? (e.g. *ET/K-L “ethical”)
  4. only if there’s also no *.

  Does Learn Plover! have anything to say on this subject?

  When defining dictionary definitions by hand, you should be sure to include the hyphen when appropriate

  I think I can handle that. Why not always generate a - until I see it break?

One final note, someone’s blog recommended keeping the dictionary handy, that being able to quickly add or edit definitions was really helpful. I wonder if I could set up a single key in my layer or a brief in a dictionary to run that Plover function?

found

20 Nov 2020

I adopted a nav/command dictionary that I found on the internet.

I have by now also read the section in Learn Plover! about dictionaries, so I feel well-equipped to start tabbing my way around.
The only real trouble is (on a Windows machine) I keep this repo checked-out to a directory in WSL2, which is not (easily) accessible from Windows, where I’ve installed Plover. Whoops.

Ok, I realized (again) that this will not solve all my nav use cases. I still need a way to alt-tab that either lets me hold alt while hitting tab any number of times (and sending those inputs individually, so I can see results), or I need a brief for “hit alt-tab twice in a row” etc, up to like 4 or 5 (the max number of windows I’d want to be open in a space anyway). Gonna try setting some of my own nav briefs for this.

<experiments with Alt_L(Tab Tab Tab) ensue>

I think this particular behavior is not something I can achieve with steno. Perhaps it is time to back up and take another look at the QMK symbol layer bound to my bottom left pinky key. Another night.

qmk_firmware

19 Nov 2020

Today I updated my qmk_firmware repo [now deleted] to match what Jane has on their side. I tried a PR, but that got really mucky with a changed file and a changed submodule, so I backed out, saved patches of my commits, and completely remade my fork. It turns out the changed file also hit my new fork (wtf?), but the patches applied just fine.

Last night I read about dictionaries, and how Learn Plover! teaches the shift/ctrl/alt/super keys. It’s interesting, and I’m ready to start tinkering with my own dictionary for nav & control. I also tried using the Georgi’s pre-baked Symbol layer, but had some trouble with the alt-tab behavior I expect [see previous post].
It’s worth re-flashing with the updated qmk from germ/qmk_firmware, and if that doesn’t work I can still try my own symbol map and if THAT doesn’t work perhaps I can fall back to using a steno dictionary entries to define “alt-tab once”, “alt-tab twice” etc.

plover v4.0.0

15 Nov 2020

Upgraded to Plover v4.0.0. When they say “back up your plover.cfg” that file is in C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\plover\plover\. Wondering if there’s a way to stay accountable for daily activity without bloating this journal file.

journaling

14 Nov 2020

journaling with steno now! ok back to qwerty. that took a few minutes, but I’m having fun learning about the control mechanisms (to insert a space or not, to capitalize or not), as well as punctuation and positioning chords. I’d like to try to find a testimonial about Plover’s “space placement” option (before or after chord output). I feel like that option may (a) have a medium-to-large impact on the workflow for coding vs prose, and (b) be really hard to retrain later.