Feather Theory

A one-handed steno theory by Eris

You will need some plugins to use Feather.In Plover, navigate to the Plugins Manager like this:

Install plover-stenotype-extended and plover-python-dictionary.
After installing the plugins, restart Plover.We now need to mess with the stenotype extended plugin a bit. Open the config folder:

Navigate to the site-packages folder.
Windows: plover/plover/plugins/win/Python39/site-packagesIn this folder should be a file named extended_stenotype.py
Replace this file with the extended_stenotype.py file from the Feather github repo.Now open the Configure menu:

Find the System tab and switch the system to Stenotype Extended:

Now go to the Machine tab. You should see something like this:

Use the keymap editor to assign the Feather's keys to keys on your keyboard.

Feather has 10 keys: T, F, D, M, S, R, O, A, E, U

When you go to set keys in the Keymap, you will see other keys in there as well due to the constraints of the Stenotype Extended plugin. You can ignore anything in there that isn’t part of the 10 keys listed above.Pay close attention to the hyphens: S- and -S are different! Every Feather key has the hyphen to the right of the letter, so they are:
T- F- D- M- S- R- O- A- E- U-

This is a picture of my keyboard with my personal layout of the Feather keys:

This is not the standard or default Feather layout though. In fact, there is no standard Feather layout at all because everyone’s hands are different. I also have two copies of the Feather keys on my layout, but this is not required to use the theory.

Due to the fact that 10 keys is an incredibly tight space to try to cram all of the English language, pretty much every possible combination of keys gets used so bear that in mind if you’re creating a layout.Most consonants are 2x1, 1x2, or 2x2 rectangles on my layout. For this reason I would recommend that consonant keys that are close together on my layout stay close together on yours if possible. Consult the Cheat Sheet if you want more specifics.Experiment with your layout and see what works!By convention, when we are talking about combinations of Feather keys or writing Plover dictionaries, we use the order TFDMSROAEU. This has no significance in the theory, but makes communication and sharing dictionaries much easier.

Before you get started, make sure you have the keymap set up properly and the feather-starter.json and feather-mandatory-briefs.json dictionaries from the feather github repo imported into Plover. Order your dictionaries so that user.json is above the feather dictionaries, and remove any other dictionaries from the dictionary stack.

In stenography, the way the keyboard or machine is used is to hold down one or more keys at the same time, and then release those keys at the same time. This action is called a stroke.General best practices for stenography strokes:

Good technique becomes important later once you start to gain familiarity and speed. You are going to be performing a lot of steno strokes, so it’s important that they take the least effort and time possible.That said, when you start out it’s going to feel awkward and clumsy. There may be certain combinations of keys that you really struggle with, or theory rules that just won’t stick in your mind. This is normal! You are learning an entire new method of interfacing with a computer. Getting competent at stenography takes hard work and practice, but in return you get a cool skill!If you feel like a noob, you’re doing something right.

Let’s get down to business. Open a fresh document in a text editor and get Plover ready.
To write the word ‘red’ will take two strokes:
R and E simultaneously for the first stroke,
and then just D on its own for the second stroke.Try it out. After the first stroke, Plover should output the text ‘RE’ and then after the second, it should remove the ‘RE’ and replace it with ‘red’.We call RE/D the outline for 'red'. The Feather starter dictionary has an entry mapping the outline RE/D to the text 'red'.

Doing this exercise is going to put a bunch of text into your document. To keep things organised and allow you to correct any errors, you'll want to know these outlines:

OAE undo the previous stroke
FSR go onto a new line

In lesson 1 we learned:

Use the following exercises to get acclimated to the Feather keys, and move on to the next lesson once you're comfortable navigating the layout purely by feel.It’s ok if it takes a long time to get your hands in the right place, and remember to get everything in position before the keys go down. Speed is irrelevant at this stage, focus on getting it right every time.Always remember that you get good at what you do. If you implement proper stroking technique in your practice, you will get good at proper technique. Implement poor technique, and you will get good at using poor technique.

tat tar tot toss tor tut tuff
fat faff fad fam far fed fess fuss
dad dam dot door dud
mat mad mass mar mod moss met mess mutt mud
sat sad sass sod set sud sum sus
rat rad ram rot rod ref red rut rum

rut rot rat set sat mutt met mat dot fat tut tot tat
ruff ref faff tuff
rod rad sud sod sad mud mod mad dud dad fed fad
rum ram sum dam fam
sus sass mess moss mass toss
door tor

You may have noticed in the previous lesson that there is not always a one-to-one correspondence between the letters you press and the letters in the word that pops out. This is because the underlying theory rules governing the dictionary are phonetic.Keys are used for syllables with certain sounds. Because everyone pronounces words differently (and to avoid making you learn IPA), we describe phonetics in relative terms. The following table links all of the Feather keys to their corresponding sounds by listing some representative words containing those sounds. There are some nuances and exceptions but we'll cover those later:

Why does the table have multiple words for the same sound in some places?

Why is R is missing from the table?

A chord is a combination of one or more steno keys that represents a particular sound. Up until this point, all of the chords we've used have been single keys. Here's where that changes.Our first multi-letter chord is EU, which basically functions like an I key.

Some words in English are pronounced the same as one another. This means we sometimes have words fighting over the same outline, which is known as a conflict in stenography.
We resolve these conflicts by adding an additional stroke of OA onto the end of the entry. Generally, the longer word is the one that takes the OA and if the words are the same length it’s down to alphabetical order, vibes, or a set of rules that are somehow convenient. Have a look at the following sets of entries for conflicting words:

Adding extra OA strokes, especially more than one, can be kind of a pain if you use a word a lot. For brevity, we can save strokes by a process called folding: we take the OA stroke and turn it into an OA chord on the previous stroke:

From here on out, folding OA is an optional rule in Feather theory. Use it or don't use it at your own convenience.

Generally in stenography when an entry uses nonstandard, optional, or inconsistent rules in order to take a smaller number of strokes we call that entry a brief. So in feather, entries that fold OA are considered briefs.A mandatory brief refers to a word that can only be written using a brief and have to be memorised. All steno theories have some number of these for various reasons.In Feather theory's case, briefs are the only way to write a word in a single stroke. This means we really want to use briefs for the most common words, so that we can save lots of strokes. For this reason Feather theory has around 80 single-stroke mandatory briefs.Here are the mandatory briefs that line up with the portion of theory we have learned so far:

The outlines for Feather's mandatory briefs sort of have rules to them, but are mostly vibes to be honest. Hopefully they are consistent enough that memorising them itsn't too torturous.These briefs allow us to write sentences, so hopefully this lesson's exercises are more interesting. Your aim should be to familiarise yourself with the EU chord and resolving conflicts, and to learn the briefs above, before moving on.

to of do so or
a at as am
I it if is

to at it of if
do am
so as is or

In lesson 2 we learned:

That's a lot of stuff! Make sure you practice until you're confident with all of it.

I am a rat damn it
it is said dad taught a deer a sum
to toss mud is dumb
a tit as fit as a mitt
I am so sad I do a roar
or if I am rid of a debt

So far, we have only used one consonant at a time. But there are many words containing clusters of multiple consonants in one go. To do this in Feather, we press all of the corresponding keys at the same time.

As you can see, the order of the sounds within the cluster has no effect on which keys are used. This can end up bringing words into conflict (but not very often):

TSA/R star
TSA/R/OA tsar

You may find yourself wanting to write a word, but not knowing which strokes to use.Plover's “add translation” menu is a great tool for looking up words.Open the menu using the outline TROAU. It should look something like this:

There are two ways to look up words with the “add translation” menu:
If you enter an outline into the "Strokes" bar it displays translations for that outline.
If you type text into the "Translation" bar it displays all of the steno strokes that yield that text.Naturally, you can also use the "Add translation" menu to add translations to your dictionary. Just press Ok with an outline in the "Strokes" bar and text in the "Translation" bar.

It is convenient to be able to use the "Add Translation" menu without needing a mouse. The following outlines will help you do that:

FSOA shortcut for the "tab" key
FSROA shortcut for the "escape" key (cancels out of the menu)
And also recall:
FSR newline (confirms adding a translation in the menu)
TROAU open the "Add Translation" menu

Depending on where you're from, add one of these entries to your user.json dictionary:

It is very important to gain familiarity with this menu as looking up and adding entries to dictionaries is vital for any practitioner of stenography.
Here are a few reasons why you may want to add your own entries:

Entering text into a document is fine, but there are a few available tools specifically for practicing stenography. I like Steno Jig personally.
When using Steno Jig, I would recommend disabling the timer and live wpm count because they are distracting, and disabling the hints because they won’t display Feather keys.

to of do so or a at as am I it if is

Experiment with different methods and tools for practice and see what works best for you!

There will be some of these in every lesson from now on. Be sure to stay on top of practicing them!

In lesson 3 we covered:

In lesson 4 we might cover: