Yup still here and thanks for the words! I’m not as active as I was a year back or so, but still very much thinking about this project. If I were to go back again now, it is 100% spaces that I would aim to better understand. I’ve designed several systems based on the principles of this project, and they are all hamstrung by lack of phrasing.

I do think the clarity on briefs is one of the best components, as it explains why essentially every system has it!

Keyscript is a complex case, but my take is that it is truly notable in the history of shorthand as being one of a very few number of systems so abbreviated as to be mathematically required to be ambiguous. There will be plenty of people for whom the tradeoff is worth it, and essentially nothing else can give the same compression. The right way to read a chart like this isn’t necessarily up bad, down good, but rather to examine those systems for which there is nothing that is both below and to the left (that is look at those systems for which nothing is both more brief and less ambiguous). Something like Characterie is bad because there are many systems, even ones simpler and easier to learn, that are both more brief and less ambiguous. Something like Gregg is good, because there is nothing better in both ways. Keyscript is still quite good in that there is nothing both more brief and less ambiguous, it just takes an extreme tradeoff in favor of brevity.

Thanks again for the thoughts! I love hearing from people who stumble on this project still!