`plover.steno` – Steno data model#

This module deals with the fundamental concept in stenography: the stroke. A stroke is a combination of keys all pressed at once; an outline is a series of strokes performed in succession.

Many Plover actions deal with steno strokes, and this will be especially useful to authors of system and dictionary plugins.

Steno Notation#

Steno notation refers to the way steno strokes are written textually, such as on the paper tape or in dictionaries. Each stroke is written as a concatenation of several keys, sometimes with a hyphen.

Steno notation is also sometimes referred to as RTF/CRE (Rich Text Format with Court Reporting Extensions) notation, named after the dictionary format that popularized it.

Each steno system has a steno order, or a canonical ordering of all the keys on the layout. For most systems, this is the ordering of the keys from left to right, starting with the left bank, then the thumb keys, then the right bank, but others may use a different order. Well-formed steno notation must have all keys in steno order.

The full list of keys and rules for expressing strokes in steno notation are defined for each steno system. See plover.system – Steno systems for more information.

Keys#

Combinations of keys can be expressed by concatenating the letters representing them; for example, S-, -E and -T together can be written SET, and K- and W- together can be written KW-. All but one hyphen is removed to separate the left and right bank keys, but the hyphen may be omitted completely if a stroke includes certain keys, such as the -E in SET, or the * in R*R.

Strokes are often written with a hyphen, because without one it may not be fully clear which side each key is on. For example, the P in KPT may refer to either left-hand P- or right-hand -P; writing KP-T or K-PT respectively is unambiguous. Strokes that consist entirely of left bank keys may be written without a hyphen, e.g. KW- can be written KW.

Some strokes may still be resolvable when not completely well-formed, i.e. the hyphen is in the wrong place or doesn’t exist when it should, or the keys aren’t fully in steno order, but it’s not guaranteed to work.

Numbers#

When a part of a stroke represents a number we don’t write the number key; instead, we replace the letter keys with the corresponding numbers.

For example, to express the stroke represented by pressing the S- and T- keys together with the number bar (#) in steno notation, we write 12-, since S- represents the number 1- and T- represents 2-.

If a stroke consists only of a number key, or none of the other pressed keys represent numbers, we still write the number key. For example, # and #-R are both valid steno notation, since -R does not represent a number, but #P- is not (write 3- instead).

Multiple Strokes#

We use the stroke delimiter, /, to separate successive strokes in a single outline. For example, to write the 3-stroke outline for New York Times, we write:

TPHU/KWRORBG/TAOEUPLS

Note that TPHU, KWRORBG and TAOEUPLS are all separate strokes, but the / indicates that they are written in sequence.

Steno Stroke API#

class plover.steno.Stroke#

An object representing a stroke. This class is a subclass of BaseStroke.

classmethod normalize_stroke(steno: str[, strict = False]) → str#: Return the normalized steno notation for the singular stroke steno. Raises an exception if the steno was not parsed correctly, and strict is True.

classmethod normalize_steno(steno: str[, strict = False]) → Tuple[str]#: Return the normalized steno notation for the possibly multi-stroke outline steno, where each stroke may be separated by /. Each element in the tuple is one stroke in the outline. Raises an exception if the steno was not parsed correctly, and strict is True.

classmethod steno_to_sort_key(steno: str[, strict = False]) → bytes#: Return a byte string used to place the steno stroke steno in order in a dictionary. Raises an exception if the steno was not parsed correctly, and strict is True.

steno_keys: List[str]#: A sorted list of the steno keys that compose this stroke.

rtfcre: str#

The normalized (or canonical) steno notation for this stroke.

The canonical steno notation for a stroke has the following properties:

All of the keys are in steno order
There is a hyphen only if at least one key on the right bank is pressed and this key is not an implicit separator
Number keys are written as numbers rather than using the number key (for example, -8 rather than #-L)

is_correction: bool#: Whether this stroke is a correction stroke, and can be used to undo the previous stroke.

plover.steno.normalize_stroke(steno: str[, strict = False]) → str#: Same as Stroke.normalize_stroke().

plover.steno.normalize_steno(steno: str[, strict = False]) → Tuple[str]#: Same as Stroke.normalize_steno().

plover.steno.steno_to_sort_key(steno: str[, strict = False]) → bytes#: Same as Stroke.steno_to_sort_key().

plover.steno.sort_steno_strokes(strokes_list: List[Tuple[str]]) → List[Tuple[str]]#: Return a new list of outlines sorted by the number of strokes first, and then the length of each stroke (number of keys).

plover.steno – Steno data model#