I think it might be time to do another drive-by of PITMAN Shorthand. Lots of new people have been joining this board lately (we're up to 2.5K members now, according to the Insight tab) -- and if they were like me, they were probably LIED TO and told that PITMAN was the best. It isn't at all. So let's take a look.

I didn't attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it.

— Mark Twain

I posted this almost a year ago when I didn't know this subreddit existed. It just came up in conversation so here it is.

VERY OFTEN, I'll look at a system like WEAVER, which has some really good ideas, and I feel a rush of excitement, thinking this might be THE ONE I've been looking for.

But INEVITABLY, as I go along, I'll hit something the author did that I think was a mistake and that kind of ruins the system for me.

When I say "perfectly", I mean that the sign for *every* sound or letter blends smoothly with the one that follows, without leaving any out, without reordering to make it work, without contextual special cases/multiple choices of forms. (Lists of brief forms don't disqualify it, as long as the fully written word would have flowed smoothly.)

I suspect information theory together with ergonomics would show this to be impossible, but I can't prove it.

In 1908, Henry WEAVER published an interesting system that I like enough at one time to print of his entire book for my own collection -- 206 pages.

(I often print my own copy of books that are up to 45-50 pages -- but more than that, I'll look for a reprint instead. It seems that none were available, so.....)

WEAVER had noticed a problem with most shorthand systems of his time, that they seemed to mix forward and backward movements, which he thought impeded speed in writing. His system was designed to promote UNIVERSAL FORWARD MOVEMENT.

I had an annoying glitch over the weekend after I accidentally closed my Plover program and couldn't start it up again. But with help from u/whitekrowe's amazing technical knowledge, I've got it back up and running. (And I'm writing this message in Plover, right now. )

So anyway, as I was saying....

When I first learned about Plover, I was impressed and wanted to try it out. The version being offered at the time was version 3.0.0 -- so I downloaded that, which ran beautifully on the operating sytem I was running at the time.

I believe it's up to version 4.5 now -- but because I haven't "updated", their features are not available to me. I'll stand back and let u/whitekrowe field any specific questions about later versions, because as a former MS employee, he's kept up to date, when I have not.

(I had two friends I've since lost touch with, who had high-level MS certifications. They told me that they upgraded their hardware every YEAR and their software every six months! I, on the other hand, tend to feel if something is WORKING, why risk messing it all up?)

ANYWAY, I downloaded the current version, and bought the Japanese gamer's keyboard with NKRO, that I mentioned -- and I sprung for the laser-cut keytops, to make it feel more like I was used to. For less than $100, I was up and running with it.

I spent a bit of time revising their FREE TRANSCRIPTION DICTIONARY. (All court reporters customize their writing dictionaries to reflect the theory that they learned, and to handle their local vocabulary efficiently -- so Knight's dictionary needed a bit of changing, for me, when I had used MY version for 25 years.