pinchord-7 Contractions

Pinchord · pinchord.git · Tickets · Changelog

Ticket · History

Closed, released with pinchord-8 v30

Symptom/Problem

Pinchord can only write contractions such as "it's", "he'll", "can't", etc. in three strokes at a minimum. The common contraction "I'm" requires one stroke per letter, which is infeasibly slow.

A goal used in Pinchord's design has been to be able to write words in roughly one syllable per stroke, and to not need any more or any fewer. Contractions requiring 3 strokes does not fit this goal.

Potential Solutions

Contraction Dictionary

Add a dictionary of contractions using the AOIU/AOIU^ brief chords. These would not strictly be "mandatories", as the pinchord-4 Mods can do contractions in 3-4 strokes.

I think requiring users to memorize a rather large dictionary of contractions very much goes against the foundational ideas of Pinchord, which are of consistency and flatter learning curve.

I have found a brief contractions dict to be quite difficult to design so far due to Pinchord's relatively limited space for briefing.

Contraction Finals

Add the following finals:

I believe these are the only ones needed to reach the one stroke per word goal?

Pinchord already has plenty of niche finals like this, and they wouldn't be that out of place.

The reason contraction finals have not been added to date is that they're quite difficult to place sensibly. I think requiring users to memorize 9 arbitrary chords is fine, though. Pinchord is somewhat built around a 2-phase learning curve (which I should document), and contractions are definitely in that second phase.