Live data from Hacker News

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

typelit.io

241–250 of 394 posts

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

#241

Typelit.io will help me practice/improve my steno skills. Here's some feedback: - +1 for dynamic metrics (WPM+ACC) while typing, shown at the page dash. - Consider partnering with publishers to increase your content coverage. - Add ability to request books - +10 for Tech books - Keep it free! - Gamify the heck out of it. It'll allow you to create revenue streams while keeping it FREE. KEEP THE FIRE BURNING Octourobor…

Hello and thanks for your suggestions!

- Dynamic metrics is coming very very very soon - Good idea reaching out to publishers -- I might just do that. - People just email me their requests anyway, but it might be a good idea to invite the interaction - I'd love to host tech books, but as far as I know, most aren't in the public domain - Keeping it free is the plan! - Gamification is coming once I eventually get around to making user accounts. I'm not really sure how it'll create revenue streams though, so if you have something in mind, let me know!

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

#243
This reminds me that when I was younger, around 9 or 10 years old, we lived with my mom in some desolate place where Internet was nonexistent. We still had a computer though, so what I would do to pass time is that I would pick up some books from her library and retype them on computer. This really was an amusing experience and I could spend hours doing it. Wonder if I'd get the same feeling ten years later.

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

#244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s an interesting idea that we still “need” typing practice. We do it every day why would we need to practice extra? To provide an additional use case, my wife just got me an awesome and completely configurable ergonomic keyboard for my birthday and I’m considering switching to Dvorak or Coleman layouts after typing QWERY my entire life. I NEED a long form practice like this instead of just typing nonsense short bl…

> It’s an interesting idea that we still “need” typing practice. We do it every day why would we need to practice extra? We all walk every day, but most people have terrible form and efficiency and would probably injure themselves if they tried to do it for long periods without practicing...

Does this really apply to typing, though? To what extent could one suffer from long-term injuries due to the way they're typing? I know one can suffer from repetitive strain injury if they are not using their mouse properly, but does this extend to keyboards as well?

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

#247
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…

For this to actually work you probably need to put the original text away, try to recreate a piece of it from memory, and repeat until you get it close to right. AKA the Benjamin Franklin method.

Just like anyone can trace or copy a picture drawn by a master, copying text won't grant understanding. What actually matters for a creator is the ability to produce content from higher level ideas, eg from whatever mental representation you used to hold the writing or drawing in memory.

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

#248

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 proo…

When i noticed that there are only public domain works, I got an idea for an optional mode where you help digitize books by typing from scanned/OCRed works and the results get sent to organizations like the Gutenberg Project or Distributed Proofreaders[0].

In the case of Distributed Proofreaders you could automate the process even by creating a diff of your results with the current draft of the Works being worked on.

This is just a crazy idea nobody take it too seriously. [0]https://www.pgdp.net/c/

Post reply on HN