Estenografia


Typing

Short answer: yes, absolutely — and Arch is actually a great choice for this. Long answer: you can do real stenography on a normal keyboard, mostly from the terminal, with one small graphical piece (X/Wayland) to capture chords.

Let’s break it down cleanly.

Plover no instales yay -S plover porque compila, instala el appimage y vas a tener que instalar fuse2 tambien para que funcione el appimage.

1️⃣ The core tool: Plover (OpenSteno)

Plover is the real stenography engine used for court-style steno. It works with:

  • real steno machines ✅
  • normal QWERTY keyboards ✅

It’s open source and runs on Linux (including Arch).

⚠️ Important truth: Pure TTY (Ctrl+Alt+F1) cannot do stenography, because:

  • steno requires simultaneous key presses (chords)
  • Linux TTY input is sequential, not chord-aware

So:

  • Terminal-based workflow? YES
  • Text-only console (no X/Wayland)? NO

You need X11 or Wayland, but you can still live in the terminal.

2️⃣ Install Plover on Arch Linux

Option A — AUR (recommended)

yay -S plover

or

paru -S plover

Option B — pip (works everywhere)

pip install --user plover

Run it:

plover

This launches a small GUI window (just the engine).

3️⃣ Use Plover with a normal keyboard

In Plover settings:

Machine → Keyboard

This enables QWERTY steno mode.

Default keyboard steno layout (important)

S T K P W H   F P L T D
A O E U

These are phonetic, not letters.

You press multiple keys at once to produce words.

Example:

  • TKPW → “g”
  • KAT → “cat”
  • PWAEUBG → “basic”

This is exactly how court reporters type, just slower at first.

4️⃣ “Terminal-only” workflow (the good part)

Once Plover is running, it types into whatever has focus.

That means you can use:

  • alacritty
  • kitty
  • foot
  • wezterm
  • xterm

Example:

nvim notes.txt

Then:

  • keep Plover running in background
  • type steno chords
  • text appears in Neovim

💡 From your perspective, it feels like terminal stenography.

5️⃣ Learning steno from the terminal

Here’s how to stay terminal-native:

📘 Lessons

Use plain-text lessons:

git clone https://github.com/openstenoproject/plover-tutorial
less plover-tutorial/lessons.md

Or write your own drills in Markdown and open them in nvim.

🧪 Practice method (recommended)

Split terminal:

tmux

Pane 1:

nvim lesson.txt

Pane 2:

nvim practice.txt
  • Read lesson
  • Steno-type into practice buffer
  • No mouse
  • No distractions

6️⃣ Minimalist Arch setup (my recommendation)

  • Window manager: sway or i3
  • Terminal: foot or kitty
  • Editor: nvim
  • Background app: plover

This is about as anti-enshittified as typing gets.

7️⃣ Reality check (important)

Learning steno is:

  • 🧠 cognitive
  • 🖐️ muscle-memory heavy
  • 📉 frustrating at first

But:

  • After basics → 200+ WPM is real
  • QWERTY typing caps out ~80–120 WPM
  • Steno scales much higher

8️⃣ Want a next step?

I can:

  • 🗺️ give you a 30-day steno learning plan
  • 🧩 explain phonetic theory vs dictionary theory
  • ⌨️ design a QWERTY steno layout optimized for laptops
  • 🧪 help you avoid RSI while chord typing

Just say which one.