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Show HN: I made a site where you practice typing by retyping entire novels

typelit.io

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Re: Show HN: I made a site where you practice typing by retyping entire novels

#201

Post by gregsadetsky »

Congrats, it's really great! I have a few thoughts/suggestions, but first:

Does anyone know of a competitive/practice typing site (as TypeLit, or TypeRacer) where you help digitize books (or any sort of document)?

I'm very motivated by TypeRacer's competitions (it's silly, I know), but I would be even more inclined to play if I knew that there was a "greater" purpose...!

I haven't looked into Project Gutenberg's proof reading volunteering. But, something like that? A sort of "good for humanity" reCaptcha (the original one, that helped Google to digitize books)..?

---

Ideas for TypeLit:

- It would be nice if the WPM/ACC counters updated in real time in the upper right corner, not just when changing pages

- The competitive aspect of https://play.typeracer.com/ might not be a perfect fit for your site but just wondering if a leaderboard/social element could work (probably not, but just a thought)

Re: Show HN: I made a site where you practice typing by retyping entire novels

#202

Post by cbsks »

smabie wrote: post #159
grugagag wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm productive in bursts as well. I have the feeling that in between bursts things are still computing in the background so it looks like you're not doing anything but the brain is still churning. This type of bursty productivity is very hard to account for in a corporate environment where one's productivity should be accounted for on a daily basis and laid down in cookie cutter time slots. I often wonder whether I h…

If you goal is to get prescribed stimulants (amphetamines, ritalin, or modafinil), it's pretty trivial to get diagnosed and prescribed. Psychs hand that stuff out like candy

I went to my general practitioner (in the US) and got a Ritalin prescription just by saying “I have a hard time concentrating at work”. That’s it. No referral to a specialist or anything.

It is a wonder drug for me. I used to spend a majority of my time farting around on the internet at work, then working long hours and scrambling to get my work done before the deadline. Now I am able to be productive more consistently and don’t miss nearly as many deadlines.

Re: Show HN: I made a site where you practice typing by retyping entire novels

#203

Post by dhp1161 »

ebj73 wrote: post #129

I think maybe it would be better if the application showed any erroneously typed characters, rather than the correct characters in red. Or, if it's possible, to show some sort of visual juxtaposition between the two. Also, I think maybe the font size should be a little bit larger, at least for the text around the position where the cursor is, if not for the whole text. Otherwise, nice application!

I agree with all points especially the cursor. Wish cursor was like Word where it's a line instead of highlighting the letter block.

Re: Show HN: I made a site where you practice typing by retyping entire novels

#204

Post by ponker »

bravura wrote: post #2

"[Hunter S. Thompson] chose, rather than writing original copy, to re-type books like The Great Gatsby and a lot of Norman Mailer, the Naked and the Dead, a lot of Hemingway. He would sit down there on an old type-writer and type every word of those books and he said, 'I just wanna feel what it feels like to write that we'll.'" HST: "If you type out somebody's work, you learn a lot about it. Amazingly it's like music…

Important to note that it was on a manual typewriter. The key is making it slow, so you can observe how the author is doing what they're doing. Reading is very fast ... typing on a manual typewriter is slow enough to give you time to observe.

Re: Show HN: I made a site where you practice typing by retyping entire novels

#205

Post by nicoboo »

I've tried and like it.

Few comments to improve your work: French language has a space before and after '?' or '!'.

Also, normally, there are also other accent on uppercase letter, for example I had 'A la serre, le croc et l'ongle.' in 'Le livre de la Jungle', the first A should be 'À'.

Chart for progression in WPM or correctness, tips to improve, audio feedback activation if error in typing...

Keep going, it's a good idea!

Re: Show HN: I made a site where you practice typing by retyping entire novels

#207

Post by yesenadam »

bravura wrote: post #2

"[Hunter S. Thompson] chose, rather than writing original copy, to re-type books like The Great Gatsby and a lot of Norman Mailer, the Naked and the Dead, a lot of Hemingway. He would sit down there on an old type-writer and type every word of those books and he said, 'I just wanna feel what it feels like to write that we'll.'" HST: "If you type out somebody's work, you learn a lot about it. Amazingly it's like music…

> Amazingly it's like music.

Maybe he means like jazz musicians? (I'm one.) Every musician I know has transcribed solos. You pick some solo you like but have no idea what they're doing, transcribe it, and learn to play it along with them. Bits and pieces perhaps will rub off in your own playing. You don't want to sound like them, but it's good to be able to if you want – and for that you need to absorb their style, so your body can just go into that mode, without having to think about it. I'm a piano player but have also transcribed sax, trumpet, bass lines, gospel songs, reggae, funk, .. even taps dripping, babies crying etc etc.

Re: Show HN: I made a site where you practice typing by retyping entire novels

#208

Post by nhlx2 »

Octouroboros wrote: post #61
globular-toast wrote: post #57

One thing I really miss is the ability to backspace an entire word. I expect Ctrl+backspace to delete the previous word. This works in all places that I usually type so I find it quite difficult to not have this.

Hello! I feel the same way -- Ctrl+backspace support is planned for a future update. Thanks!

Awesome! I came here to say the same thing. Great work BTW!!

Re: Show HN: I made a site where you practice typing by retyping entire novels

#210

Post by localhost »

Love this idea. I've recently decided to do some deliberate practicing around typing. I've been using keybr [1] which is a great site that randomly makes up phonetically accurate pseudo-words and has you type them. The goal there is to have you practice weak combinations of keys, and they have an excellent stats dashboard to show you your progress over time. I was able to raise my typing speed from ~90 wpm to ~110 wpm as measured on that site over about 40 days through 10 minutes of practice per day.

Based on my experience with that site, which I really love, I'd love to see some additional tracking of keys. The downside of your core idea is that you can't really do the trick of forcing deliberate practice of weak key patterns to engrain them into you.

Some other suggestions for stats, based on what exists on keybr and what I'd like to see

- Time practiced today and stats for today

- Daily streaks to encourage practicing

- Cumulative time practiced

- A 7 day running average of your typing stats

[1] https://keybr.com

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