CART Problem Solving: Lag

CART Problem Solving Series

Sitting Apart
Handling Slides
Classroom Videos
Latin
Superscript and Subscript
Schlepping Gear
Late Hours
Expensive Machines
Communicating Sans Steno
Cash Flow
Lag
Summer
Test Nerves
Ergonomics
Speech Recognition, Part I
Speech Recognition, Part II
Speech Recognition, Part III
Speech Recognition, Part IV



CART PROBLEM: There's too much delay between when a word is written and when it appears onscreen.

If you read The Plover Blog, you'll have seen today's post about the updated Windows version. This means, among many other exciting things, that I can use Plover as a monitoring system for my steno output when my clients are sitting too far away to read comfortably from their screens. Unlike systems like StreamText (which charge per minute) and Bridge (which, in my experience, are unreliable and prone to freezing the entire connection -- client computer and monitoring computer alike), Plover runs on a completely separate connection that has no effect on my client's connection. I can turn it off and on with impunity and never affect what my client views on their screen. This is a big deal. Plover's still not quite at the stage where it can completely take over from Eclipse, my proprietary steno software, but it's definitely advanced enough to be very useful as a monitoring system. One of its best features is that unlike all the other steno software on the market, it has a length-based stroke buffer rather than a time-based stroke buffer, so there's absolutely no lag between when I write a word and when it appears in its active window.

Proprietary steno software is always written with court reporters in mind, and CART functionality tends to be put in as an afterthought. Lawyers don't care if there's a 1.5 second delay between when something is said and when it appears on the screen, and sometimes court reporters are grateful for the time difference between what they see on their screen with pending translation display turned on (though they still have to read through lots of ugly metacharacters) and what the lawyers see on their realtime screens, since it allows them to correct any errors they might have made before the lawyers can spot them. But CART is a very different business. In order for CART to be truly useful to our clients, the text output has to be as smooth and instantaneous as possible. There's inevitably going to be some delay built in; it takes time for the provider to hear and write the words at one end, and it takes time for the client to read and comprehend the words on the other end. But even a small additional delay added on can mean unnecessary frustration and embarrassment. When a professor asks one of my clients a question and they pause to let the words appear on the screen, each tiny fraction of a second can diminish the professor's estimation of my client's intelligence, competence, or attentiveness. It's not rational and it's not fair, but it's a fact, and I think it's important to minimize it as much as humanly possible.

Since I can't yet use Plover in all my daily work, what do I do? I certainly don't want to make them read through the metacharacters. So I turn pending translation display off, and at every pause in speech, no matter how tiny, I invoke the {FLUSH} command, which I write "TPHR-RB". This manually dumps the buffer and avoids the 1.5 second delay. I just looked at my dictionary statistics, and it tells me that I've written {FLUSH} over 1.1 million times and counting. 1.1 million wasted keystrokes. (Sometimes instead of {FLUSH} I'll write STPH-B instead, which roughly translates to "press the right arrow key" and accomplishes the same thing. I've written that about 105,000 times.) It's so annoying that I've got to slam on the flush stroke pretty much every sentence I write, but it's the only way to give my clients truly instant text output. I've asked the developers of Eclipse if they can include a pending translation display without the messy markup and line jumping, but they've told me it's impossible. I've just got to keep working on making Plover completely functional, and then I'll be able to finally throw away that silly superfluous flush command for good.