Hey!
First, just want to quickly mention that I found your project since I am interested in stenography but was looking for something easier and more practical (for a normal user). This seems to be it and I am really excited for this project and I think I will be following your updates! :)
I have tried it out today, and I am already experimenting with different chords and also the sensitivity.

Issue:

That said, I have encountered a small problem - smart punctuation works somewhat unreliably. It doesn't capitalize chords at the start of text (if there's no dot before it), and sometimes adds a space before the word. I suppose this issue could be not easy to solve though since you would somehow need to check whether it's the start of the text field or something like that. However, I believe this is quite an important feature since capitalizing the chorded word manually instead is just too inconvenient.

P.S.

Anyway, so far this is the only issue that makes the experience a bit unreliable and inconvenient, but really it's not a problem. Mostly I just wanted to greet you, express my interest in the project and share my experience so far (which other than this issue is really nice!) (And I don't know how else to contact you, since I've never really used twitter)

Allow user to start ZipChord with specific settings (chord dictionary, language, spacing etc.) from command line using command line options.
Also allow changing settings using the command line options while the app is running.

Describe the bug

• Random failures with chords casting with no space before them or timing

• Check the pic below, green lines when the script behavior is as expected, and red ones when not (chord=es) you can notice the first seven attempts are OK. I know, there is a space before in the first testes, but they were written below normal speed.

• Besides this, the restrict "chords while typing" option works fine for a while, then -suddenly- cast the chord. For a while I mean, like 5 min is working fine (full testing typing) and then, a couple of minutes typing/or switch application, and then, shoot the chord! I set the detection delay at 65, and is fine for a while. Maybe something needs to be clear or resetead at the end of a loop or conditional. (just an idea)
  

Useful Details

• Which settings do you have selected in the ZipChord settings?
  

• If the output is wrong, what is the sequence of keys pressed, the dictionary entry, and what text appears on the screen?

Hello and thank you so much for developing this tool! I use it every day and really appreciate it.

As of 1.5.2, when Smart Punctuation is set to "chord only" mode, entering a punctuation character will also enter a backspace character if the cursor has been moved.

For example, if I type "foo bar", the resulting text is "foo bar". If I move my cursor back to the end of foo and type a period, the resulting text is "fo. bar".

As another exampl, if I type "Bob and Alice", go to another windo, come back, and enter a comma, the resulting text is "Bob and Alic,.

As a third example, if I type "Hello world", then type a bang, then a space, the resulting text is "Hello world! ". If I realize I also want to add a "?", I would try to do so by hitting backspace and then "?". I would expect the resulting text to be "Hello World!?" but it ends up actually being "Hello World?".

Check the shorthands-english.txt for instances where the predefined shorthand is accidentally an actual word. Example: "at" expands to "auto"

Include optional tooltips or OSD that would show reminders for chords or shorthands when the user manually types a word that exists in a dictionary.

Avoid triggering chord detection in a continued roll of several keys. Currently, chord triggers when a first key is released (if the sensitivity threshold was triggered). It is better to watch if another key won't be pressed afterwards. This will avoid some false triggers when a sequence of several keys all overlap. Example, typing "were":

W   xxxx
E     xxxx   xxx
R        xxx
-   ------------->
key         time

If the overlap of W and E is larger than the input sensitivity, and a chord for ew exists, the chord will be triggered when W is released. But because R then also overlaps a bit with E, we know it was not meant as a chord. This could allow better sensitivity for chords -- quicker chords with fewer mistakes.

Describe the bug
Authotkey interprets # as winkey therefore it cannot be used in the expanded text.

Hi there! hope you doing well!
I am using all chords with prefix mode, with the tilde ~, in order to insert my own space (meanwhile new version is released), but Smart Punctuation (chord option) is deleting last letter of the resultant word with a prefix config, e. g. dictionary file csl = casual~ is launching the right result casual -with ending space-, but if you add some punctuation (example, period <.>) script is retrieving: casua. The test is using the prefix configuration, but when just need the prefix itself is when this is happening.

I was thinking about the suggested option is just about adding this tilde symbol if some checkbox is selected at the config panel... Anyway, I hope helping you with this littler bug 😄

Open documentation page at the relevant place when pressing F1 when a ZipChord window is open.

• F1 functionality (needs switching as windows open and close, and checking for tab)
• Small help icon in the corner of windows/tabs with a link

Depends on #80

Add an automatic check for updates that will run periodically and notify if a newer version is available.

Wonderful wonderful wonderful work guys!
As a suggestion, when one is typing and chording is a custom to press the spacebar, maybe not for all people, but in the config window would be great to have a checkbox to "add or not" a space at the end of the desired string.

When deleting (part of) text using Backspace, do not allow chords (in restricted mode) and do not allow shorthands.

The reason is that the user might be editing a typo (and be resuming from the middle of a word), and not starting a new word.

A space bar or punctuation should be pressed first.

Describe the solution or functionality you'd like
It would be nice to edit the last chord that was executed. Sometimes a certian chord triggers too many times and quick adjustments like this would be beneficial.

• Allow the Tab-delimited dictionary entries to have optionally a comment in the third column.
• If the first column is empty (line starts with Tab), treat as if shortcut was not defined

    thank you! It works pretty well! here is a little test: 

There is something could be an improvement, is about fast typing triggering a chord between the word is being typed. Maybe if the chord could be able to detect if there is an space before it, else is not a desired chord. For instance, I am typing the word centena but I have the chord ent=entonces so the script is triggering c entonces ena. Tell me if make sense to you, or maybe it happens to you as well.

This script is a great partner alongside keyboard and mouse customization!
very nice work! 🤝

Originally posted by @lmendez5 in #9 (comment)

Automatic capitalization does not work without smart spaces "After punctuation" and after manually hitting space (also where a smart space is removed after pressing an addition manual space that gets (correctly) removed).

Issue: cannot output extended characters defined in expanded text.

Solution: Switch default ZipChord dictionaries to UTF-8 with BOM encoding in order to correctly support Unicode characters. Add a note to start of dictionaries (and to documentation) to say that dictionaries need to be saved as UTF-8 with BOM for extended characters to work correctly.

Workaround in the meantime: manually re-save the dictionary file as "UTF-8 with BOM"

Include description and documentation for:

• shorthands (#52)
• OSD hints for existing shortcuts (#50)
• More flexible dictionary format (#82)
• Defining new shortcuts (#79)
• #98
• Changes added in later betas and RC's
• UI screenshots
• Animation showing ZipChord in action

When output delay is used, adjustments to punctuation and capitalization that happen on the fly are done without the output delay.

The output delay should apply to these also.

Some way to delete all the characters that didn't form a complete chord but are just random letters instead of having to backspace a lot of times?

Currently, "Shift" combinations are treated differently. This makes it impossible to use Shift in parallel with a chord to make it uppercase manually, and it makes for a not very nice code.
Need to refactor the code to funnel Shift keys the same way, which also requires a rewrite for the punctuation, which is currently quite hacky and English-only. (See #16)

When opening a new chord dictionary, if the new dictionary contains chords that are in the currently open dictionary, it reports them incorrectly as duplicates.

Hi @psoukie, I was looking for a chording solution for a long time until I found this gem!
Unfortunately, I'm getting the following error right from the start:

Have you ever encountered that or any idea how to handle it?
One thing worth mentioning, is that I use a special keyboard layout (BONE, a derivation of NEO), created using KbdEdit. Could this have sth. to do with it?

Btw, have you seen the CharaChorder devices? They do the same thing on a hardware level.

Currently, the auto-capitalization is quite hacky, and English-focused only.
First, it makes narrow, language-specific assumptions about punctuation, and it capitalizes only basic Latin letters.
Need to update to support other languages, and make the punctuation rules customizable.

I have downloaded what I think is the latest version but I am not a Github expert so it may not be. What I have downloaded does not allow one to bail out if the dictionary being opened has many errors. Also, the errors may be obscure e.g. finding chords in the file which cannot be found when viewing the dictionary in a text editor (perhaps the chords have their characters in a different order). It is mentioned that if used with an NKRO keyboard Zipchord might be used to emulate steno. For this it would be necessary to load a dictionary, and to be able to find and fix errors in it.

"In future could be a nice feature adding application recognition and the script could behaves according to the current app." -- Originally posted by @lmendez5 in #13 (comment)_

Describe the bug

• Pressing the chord keys the output is ok, but to keep typing a space is required (as normal) but the space is deleted and have to press spacebar twice

Useful Details

If one tries to load a dictionary which has many chords that are anagrams of each other, error messages appear with no opportunity to abort the loading. One has to use the task manager to close Zipchord. Before restarting it is necessary to cut or delete the dictionary to stop Zipchord resuming the error messages.

When

1. Auto-capitalization is set to "For chords only" and
2. You start a new paragraph or sentence with regular typing but
3. Never manually capitalize the first (or any) character using Shift

Then: The first expanded chord or shorthand will get incorrectly capitalized.

Default dictionary installation should be done only on the very first run so the default dictionaries do not get recreated later if the user deletes or renames them.

Hi, first, thank you for this amazing program!

My idea, I've been reading about Teeline shorthand and I think it could work well with Zipchord. In Teeline they shorten words by taking off vowels and extra consonants (xtr cnsnts) so if Zipchord had an autocomplete module it would speed up typing even more, I know there are programs that already do this but the one I'm using is slow to input the text which slows the typing plus I'd rather have an all-in-one program.

Thanks again!

A configuration should be a bundle of settings for chord detection and output together with chord dictionary and locale settings (keyboard layout and punctuation rules) that can be saved and switched between them.

When renaming a locale to an existing name and saving, the existing settings are overwritten without warning.
Also, the original setting is left as a copy when renaming and saving.

The usage tip about how to add chords and reopen the ZipChord menu should have a "Do not show again" checkbox.

"Each key can be entered only once in the same chord." when adding the "shorthands-english.txt" dictionary. What am I doing wrong?

I have updated the script to allow definition of custom keys within the dictionary file.
To use it, put a "custom_keys" and then a Tab (as usual) and a list of all the characters that can be typed (without Shift or any modifier keys) somewhere in the dictionary file.

For example, in English QWERTY (already included by default), it could be as follows, separated with TAB:

custom_keys	qwertyuiop[]asdfghjkl;'zxcvbnm,./

Originally posted by @psoukie in #9 (comment)

When there is no detection (input) delay in Registry, it doesn't get initialized properly.

This issue tracks implementation of #47

Needed Features

• Recognize and replace typed text shortcuts
• UI support for selecting and editing the shorthands file
• Chords and shorthands can be independently turned on and off
• Enable auto-capitalization when using shorthands
• Allow typing prefixes and suffixes with shorthands
• Use OpeningSpace and create EndingSpace() to make behavior consistent with chords Not implemented because it did not make sense for shorthands
• Observe output delay for shorthands
• Add detection option for shorthands to fire without space or punctuation
• Check for duplicate shorthands in a dictionary
• #79
• Build default shorthands dictionary from the most frequent 5,000 English words

In the future, it would be good to also:

• Enable support for dead keys in shorthands. (It's still possible to create shorthands, just skip the dead keys in the shortcut definition.)
• Allow (some?) punctuation in a shorthand shortcut for affixes

Describe the bug
I wanted to have the following entry in my dictionary
"gma https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#inbox"
It doesn't work because the # was interprepted as windows key by autohotkey.

i tried using a list of the 3000 most used words in English as a dictionary but many words a like state and taste use the same letters and i would need to individually assign shortcuts.

Tracks the progress on implementing #50

• Programming logic (dictionaries with reverse lookup, settings and detection)
• Build UI (OSD window and options for enabling)
• Graphical representation of Shift and Space in the shortcuts
• Improve hint visuals (fixed-width font, square-enclosed basic characters)
• Modify so that dictionary.Add method adds the new shortcut to reverse dictionary
• UI option to show hints for chords, shorthands, both, or nothing. It instead shows the ones that are enabled on Dictionaries tab

Describe the bug

• A short description of the bug. some chords do not work
• What happens, and what do you expect to happen instead? if i do the possible or give chord for example (psbl and gv) it just doesn't do the chord

Useful Details

• Which settings do you have selected in the ZipChord settings? Default
• If the output is wrong, what is the sequence of keys pressed, the dictionary entry, and what text appears on the screen? psbl, shorthands english, psbl

Expand the existing functionality (defining chords for the selected text / copied into clipboard with held Ctrl+C) by creating a dialog box that allows editing of the expanded word or text as well as the shortcut; and saving it either into a chord or a shortcut dictionary.

It could also act as an editor to change the existing shortcut -- but that's trickier, and might deserve a separate issue if I cannot get it done in the first pass.

Enable localization of ZipChord's UI by creating a separate string file that allows adding translations, and UI that allows changing languages.

I read something about mirroring to deal with different words having the same chord, but I have not been able to find it again. Has it been removed?

If I restart the computer (Windows 10) Zipchord continues to provide chords, although there is no access to the menu or to the addition of chords. Zipchord does not appear in the task manager nor as an icon. How can one clear Zipchord from the computer?

Currently, user has to manually create a list of all keys that are used in a given language keyboard layout. (When using keyboards with keys different from English US.)

This information could be extracted from Windows keyboard settings and used to populate the list of keys.