Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

typelit.io

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

301–310 of 394 posts

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

#301

Post by bartread »

This is really cool. Some feedback:

- I'd prefer if the words not typed were in a lighter shade of grey so there were greater contrast between them and the words I've completed. I know this would reduce contrast with the page but I found the fact that they are such a strong grey to be somewhat of a distraction. Different people will have different preferences here, so maybe a slider or knob that can be used to adjust the contrast of yet to be typed text would be helpful.

- The fact that you can't correct mistakes is a huge annoyance and breaks my typing flow. It also tends to lead to runs of errors since I'll make a mistake, hit backspace, and then carry on typing, meaning I get an off by one error in the next few letters. I understand that you want to help people type with fewer errors but the reality is the way it works at the moment interrupts my flow much more severely than correcting the error would (and leads to far more mistakes), and you can still track the number of mistakes I make even if I'm allowed to correct them. I'd say the ability to correct mistakes should at least be an option that can be enabled or disabled according to the preference of the user.

Hope that's useful and, once again, this is very cool.

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

#302

Post by globular-toast »

I'm much better at typing my own thoughts than copying from text. But, even so, I'm not a very good typist. I don't use all of my fingers. I use mostly my index and middle with a little of my ring finger, but never my little fingers. I wonder, if I want to improve my typing skills, should I force myself to slow down and develop proper technique using all of my fingers first?

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

#303

Post by KerryJones »

globular-toast wrote: post #302

I'm much better at typing my own thoughts than copying from text. But, even so, I'm not a very good typist. I don't use all of my fingers. I use mostly my index and middle with a little of my ring finger, but never my little fingers. I wonder, if I want to improve my typing skills, should I force myself to slow down and develop proper technique using all of my fingers first?

I learned to type at a young age from video games and wasn't introduced to "Mavis Beacon" and other typing programs until I was 10 or 11. I had terrible form, but was typing at ~100wpm.

I decided I would try to learn "proper" form, and while it initially slowed me down, my top speed is now closer to 150-155.

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

#305

Post by system2 »

globular-toast wrote: post #302

I'm much better at typing my own thoughts than copying from text. But, even so, I'm not a very good typist. I don't use all of my fingers. I use mostly my index and middle with a little of my ring finger, but never my little fingers. I wonder, if I want to improve my typing skills, should I force myself to slow down and develop proper technique using all of my fingers first?

In the same boat with you. My left hand is most likely spot on, but right hand only using index and middle, pink for Enter and Backspace. I tend to make typos around the right side of the keyboard. Not sure how to fix it after decades of typing.

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

#306

Post by selestify »

badtuple wrote: post #212
wenc wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Inspiration is lumpy, so I've adopted the Fieldstone method [1] (articulated by the prolific Gerald Weinberg). In my implementation, I collect little thoughts (shower thoughts, observations, good turns of phrases, etc.) into a single continuous Google Doc. I revisit it often and guided by my current emotions and interests, try to coalesce like-ideas and rewrite them into a large idea. Some ideas eventually snowball i…

I have a similar workflow, but for a different reason. BJ Novak described in an interview how the ideation part of the process is totally different from the productive part. This spoke to me, and I've been approaching them separately ever since. When they get too inflated I either get writers/coders block or absolute spaghetti, so it's easy to see when I've grown less disciplined with the division.

Do you remember where BJ Novak gave that interview? I’m curious to see what he had to say about it

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

#307

Post by yorwba »

nicoboo wrote: post #205

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 goo…

As mentioned in the footer (which is small and low contrast, so not surprising you didn't see it), the books are from Project Gutenberg.

Both the lack of space before ? and ! and the lack of accents on the A are present in the version at https://www.gutenberg.org/files/54183/54183-h/54183-h.htm , which has the following note at the bottom

Au lecteur

Ce livre électronique reproduit intégralement le texte original, et l’orthographe d’origine a été conservée. Seules les erreurs clairement introduites par le typographe ont été corrigées. Ces corrections sont soulignées en pointillés dans le texte. Positionnez le curseur sur le mot souligné pour voir l’orthographe initiale.

Cependant «Shere-Khan» a été tacitement remplacé par «Shere Khan» et «Bandar Log» par «Bandar-Log».

It also mentions that

This file was produced from images generously made available by the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF/Gallica) at http://gallica.bnf.fr

And looking at the scan https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k96184168/f18.item.r=L... it appears that while the punctuation marks did have more space in front, the A was missing the accent even in the original.

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

#310

Post by yesenadam »

mikorym wrote: post #262
yesenadam wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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, s…

> transcribe solos Do you mean learn other people's songs from sheet music, or do you mean write down, from the sheet music, the same song again on blank sheet paper? Edit: Or do you mean write down the song via hearing?

Transcribing solos means, you listen to the music and write it down, bit by bit. Someone's solo = their improvisation. If it's simple/slow enough that it's quicker to learn it by playing along, just do that. (I've never needed to transcribe Louis Armstrong, but have just learnt by playing along with him.) If it's very fast (e.g. Bird, Coltrane) you might need to slow it down to transcribe it. You learn how to transcribe it by doing it, it also trains your ear in recognizing melodies, harmonies, chord voicings, rhythms, forms.

You can buy books of solo transcriptions, but I've found that they're absolutely useless. (and always inaccurate) Maybe it's like reading a book vs. typing it out?! hehe. At first glance I couldn't see how typing a book out would help anything, I mean, it's already written down for you! The main element of learning by working out bit by bit what it is, isn't there. But there are elements in common - it's a little like playing a solo you've written down, and you would absorb the word patterns if you typed a whole novel I guess.

Post reply on HN