an Autolookup tool to work alongside Plover stenography software
StenoTray is intended to help new steno users to learn how to stroke new words, without having to go to the dictionary to look them up.
StenoTray displays a little sidebar on your screen, and as you are typing, StenoTray is constantly trying to figure out what you are attempting to spell, and will display a list of possible choices, along with the shortest way of stroking them. Therefore, if you are stuck on a word, just sound-out the first syllable, or fingerspell the first few letters, and a list of words will appear - averting the need to turn Plover off, switch to the dictionary, do a search, memorize the stroke, switch back to your document, turn Plover back on, and continue typing.
StenoTray runs alongside Plover, and works by monitoring the Plover log file. Therefore, you must enable "Log Translations" in Plover's configuration dialog for StenoTray to work.
There are several options that can be configured in StenoTray. PLOVER_CONFIG - the path to your plover configuration file. This is vital if StenoTray doesn't find it automatically. LIMIT_RESULTS - default 0. Limit the number of results StenoTray will display at any one time. 0 means no limit. SIMPLIFY - (true or false) Will simplify the strokes presented. For example, KHROUPB (clown) would become KLOUN. FONT_SIZE - alters the size of the displayed text
All of these configuration options must be put in a config file named stenotray.cfg in your plover configuration directory ({HOME}/.config/plover/stenotray.cfg). The format is one setting per line, as follows:
OPTION_NAME = setting
Installation instructions:
Download StenoTray from https://github.com/brentn/StenoTray with the Download ZIP button
Make a file stenotray.cfg in your plover config dir. Windows: c:\Users[User]\AppData\Local\plover\plover\ Linux: {HOME}/.config/plover/stenotray.cfg
Tell StenoTray where the plover config file is with the PLOVER_CONFIG configuration. As a Windows user with account Marius, I would put the following line in my stenotray.cfg without the quotes: "PLOVER_CONFIG = c:\Users\Marius\AppData\Local\plover\plover\plover.cfg"
Doublecheck that logging is turned on (in plover.cfg it should have a line for log_file and have enable_stroke_logging and enable_translation_logging set to True)
Run StenoTray.jar by doubleclicking
If you get the error "Could not find the main class: StenoTray. Program will exit", then you probably don't have the current folder in your java path. You can instead run the file by making a shortcut or bat file that runs it like this without quotes: "java -Djava.ext.dirs=. -Djava.library.path=. StenoTray" On Windows: Rightclick "StenoTray.jar", create shortcut, rightclick "StenoTray - Shortcut.lnk", Properties, and at Target you fill in without quotes: "java -Djava.ext.dirs=. -Djava.library.path=. StenoTray"