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Show HN: Bionic Reading – Formats text to make it faster to read

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Re: Show HN: Bionic Reading – Formats text to make it faster to read

#161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I decided to take out a patent a long time ago. Unfortunately I had to make bad experiences, which is why I now want to offer BR as API. With the rules it depends on whether it is short, medium or long words. But in principle it is simple. As simple as we humans read. Eye - brain - representation products (words)

I'm quite certain I could fit BR logic in less than 300 bytes of JS Regex. There is no need for an API here.

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Re: Show HN: Bionic Reading – Formats text to make it faster to read

#163
post #127

As a non native English speaker, this does not work. Maybe because the part of the brain used to read/write/listen/speak a non native language is not the same as a native language. I really feel that I need to focus more while reading the example paragraph with the bionic stuff. I tried the other examples, but I memorized enough of the text starting the 3rd example that I could not really infer anything. Putting the…

As a native English speaker, I also felt like I had to work harder to read the bionic text. I am first grade teacher and have taught many children to read. Bionic's principles and algorithm do not match what I understand about the science of reading. This just holds the first part of a word, regardless of what the letters are. I would want an algorithm that is smarter than that (and I certainly wouldn't use bionic in…

Hi cardamomo I understand your skepticism and thank you for your criticism. What you see so far from Bionic Reading is the base. Of course, children should still learn to read. Because only when children have acquired a vocabulary, their brain has the representation products. Reading is already very well researched. I absolutely agree with you on that. Unfortunately, people are reading worse and worse. There may be many different reasons for this. But I'm sure you agree with me that reading is a cultural asset that everyone must use. Who reads worse, has thereby no advantage. Doesn't it? Reading transports knowledge. That's why I think it's important to take a closer look at the way we read. That's why I get a lot of feedback from people who have dyslexia and can read better again with Bionic Reading.

Thank you for teaching the children and best regards from the Alps, Renato

Re: Show HN: Bionic Reading – Formats text to make it faster to read

#165

The rules implemented are very simple (taken from the patent application [1], the exact numbers are configurable). If there are 4 letters, 40% of all letters are bold. There is this claim as the first text on the website: We are happy if as many people as possible can use the advantage of Bionic Reading. For this reason, Bionic Reading should be able to be integrated into existing apps and services. The benefit for t…

Looking at the example in one of the apps (Reeder 5) doesn’t work 100% the same as the patent. For example, neumann (a last name) is bolded as NEUMANn the first time it appears and NEUMann the second time it appears.

Re: Show HN: Bionic Reading – Formats text to make it faster to read

#166

I'd like to try this as an option in firefox's reader mode as that's the format in which I read most long texts. This did on the surface feel like it is a help for me, in particular not so much the reading speed but the 'pull' of the words meant I was less likely to get distracted halfway through a paragraph and tab away. (Yes, I suspect I may have undiagnosed adhd).

Just use hexomancer's script. Paste it into the Firefox console, call bionifyPage(), switch to reader mode.

Re: Show HN: Bionic Reading – Formats text to make it faster to read

#167

The rules implemented are very simple (taken from the patent application [1], the exact numbers are configurable). If there are 4 letters, 40% of all letters are bold. There is this claim as the first text on the website: We are happy if as many people as possible can use the advantage of Bionic Reading. For this reason, Bionic Reading should be able to be integrated into existing apps and services. The benefit for t…

I have hacked together an implementation of this here https://boldreader.github.io/boldreader/

Re: Show HN: Bionic Reading – Formats text to make it faster to read

#168
Could anyone explain the rationale behind it? It seems that how we represent the letters and the words has significant impacts on how easily our brains digest them.

Also a bit of tangent, but I wonder, could fellow English native speakers generally skim books like less than three to five seconds on each page, and roughly get the idea of those pages? I'm a native speaker of Chinese and it's pretty easy for me to do it in Chinese, but there's no way for me to do the same in English despite I've been reading English for years.

Re: Show HN: Bionic Reading – Formats text to make it faster to read

#169

The rules implemented are very simple (taken from the patent application [1], the exact numbers are configurable). If there are 4 letters, 40% of all letters are bold. There is this claim as the first text on the website: We are happy if as many people as possible can use the advantage of Bionic Reading. For this reason, Bionic Reading should be able to be integrated into existing apps and services. The benefit for t…

> If there are > 4 letters, 40% of all letters are bold.

Very cool :)

I would have thought there is also value in bolding the last-x-amount of letters.

I forgot the name of the "concept" but it's been shown that the beginning and ending parts of words are the most "recognizable". You usually see a sample of that on those 'silly-facebook-posts', example:

"I cnduo't bvleiee taht I culod aulaclty uesdtannrd waht I was rdnaieg"

[1] https://www.ecenglish.com/learnenglish/lessons/can-you-read

Re: Show HN: Bionic Reading – Formats text to make it faster to read

#170

The rules implemented are very simple (taken from the patent application [1], the exact numbers are configurable). If there are 4 letters, 40% of all letters are bold. There is this claim as the first text on the website: We are happy if as many people as possible can use the advantage of Bionic Reading. For this reason, Bionic Reading should be able to be integrated into existing apps and services. The benefit for t…

Because these folks deserve to eat and pay rent for a few years upon discovering something so useful.

If we expect everyone to innovate and build useful tools solely out of the goodness of their heart, then we can expect far fewer useful tools & innovations in the future.
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