[tfm]

Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7961385

Top comment starts "While Gregg shorthand is great for English, its not much use for anything technical", which was a timely intervention to stop me running off and implementing a drop-in replacement for the Android keyboard!

[kqr]

Depending on what you mean by "anything technical", I seriously doubt that. Shorthand dominated the world of commerce and law for a long time, and it's not like they don't use a bunch of jargon too. Just come up with (or find someone elses invention of) the important abbreviations and you're all set.

A propely written shorthand note should be readable by other people. Journalists are in some countries required by law to keep their shorthand notes for a certain amount of time, so they can be used as evidence in court (and then obviously read by an uninterested third party.)

If you have to write really, really quickly, then yes, typing your notes up properly soon afterward is a good idea. If you aren't under any sort of time pressure and just casually note things down, you should be able to read it years or decades later.

[falcolas]

This might interest you instead: http://www.alysion.org/handy/handywrite.htm

Relies entirely on phonetic representations, so it can represent just about anything.

[erikb]

I believe that this kind of stuff is a major step to "the vim of smartphones". One little step to make input incredibly fast.

[PepeGomez]

You mean just about anything as long as it's in English.

[adiabatty]

If you want a fully generalizable script, use IPA; if you want something designed to be fast for a particular language, use a method designed for that language. Quikscript is great for mid-century Received Pronunciation, but if you want something that's fast for Spanish, you'll likely want to change things a bit.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quikscript

[Shorel]

I don't find the Spanish version of Gregg shorthand too different from what I saw for English.

http://zonaforo.meristation.com/topic/2185985/

[voltagex_]

I really think there hasn't been enough experimentation with soft (and hard) keyboards - I saw a radial keyboard design for Android (I think it's like the SteamOS controller-keyboard) but I was told the app isn't available anymore.