What's the theory behind this idea? Why would I want to read it like this?
Show HN: ReadKinetic – a free, local-first speed reader for your own books
51–60 of 85 posts
Re: Show HN: ReadKinetic – a free, local-first speed reader for your own books
#52I like how it pauses near where I would normally pause while reading. How did you choose the cadence?
Thanks, that's the detail I was most hoping someone would pick up on. It started as a flat interval and felt terrible. Every word got the same slot, so sentences never landed and it read like a stock ticker. Now there's a base duration from the WPM setting, with per word multipliers on top: 3x on sentence-ending punctuation, 2x on commas and semicolons, and an extra 0.7x if the word is 8 characters or longer. The pun…
I was just coming to ask about word frequency. I get that cadence being jumpy might be less enjoyable, but having a look ahead that validates if a “likely to be hard to one-shot” word is coming up and slightly ramps down the pace, might make this an even better tool! Love it!
Re: Show HN: ReadKinetic – a free, local-first speed reader for your own books
#53I don’t know man. Just because you bike it doesn’t mean you have to share it. Why is this top news. Look I vivbed the same thing 2 weeks ago. https://tachys-d23ab0.gitlab.io/
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Re: Show HN: ReadKinetic – a free, local-first speed reader for your own books
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nice, always good to see another implementation! Were you able to get past the pivot alignment issue? Because in a proportional font, the word seems to slide around your eye as it shifts the spacing of the characters immediately adjacent to the pivot, so I anchored the pivot character and allowed the rest of the word to extend freely from both sides. What stood out to me as a major difference was pacing though - a fl…
Yes, DuoBook is a language learning app, so I added RSVP as an add-on feature for re-reading the stories in another language. It’s not the main experience. My idea was that the learners can do a slow turn with the main reader, and then a quick read afterwards if they want to. Honestly, I spent at least a week for the pivot alignment but at the end I accepted once in hundred words it’s shifted a bit. I might go back i…
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Re: Show HN: ReadKinetic – a free, local-first speed reader for your own books
#55What's the theory behind this idea? Why would I want to read it like this?
The hypothesis is that much of the time spent reading is not spent deciphering the words but rather on moving the eyes around. Your eyes flicker around constantly, lock onto a word, then sometimes flicker backwards to previous words (those are called regressions) and constitute somewhere between 10-15% of your reading time. The RSVP (rapid serial visual presentation) takes away this freedom, by displaying the word in a fixed place, and thus removes all of these eye movements. In principle this leaves you with just the time needed for word recognition, which is presumably what you want.
In practice, this is probably not as good as using your own eyes and here's why, in addition to the argument above about skipping words. You no longer can skip words, which people do all the time, especially short function words. You already have to preview the next word or two in order to know when you've lost your place, so even if you had perfect peripheral vision you would be no better off than before. There is also the fact that you can no longer backtrack if you lose your place or simply get bored. In principle, of course, this could be solved by always allowing the reader to step back to a previous line, but this requires extra time and in general these features are a mixed blessing.
As to whether you would want to use such a device, and assuming you could use it with other media, I would say not particularly. Unless you are an especially fast reader, in which case there just isn't anything for you to gain. The people most likely to benefit from this sort of device are the people who normally have the most regressions or lose track of where they are. It makes the sort of prose that is meant to be read in one sitting much easier, faster, and less confusing. But it fails spectacularly on more dense material or on material where the visual presentation is important in any way. It also does not help anyone who simply can't visualize a text in the same way others do.
Some people just don't have the right kind of brain, and this isn't really their fault.
Re: Show HN: ReadKinetic – a free, local-first speed reader for your own books
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nice, always good to see another implementation! Were you able to get past the pivot alignment issue? Because in a proportional font, the word seems to slide around your eye as it shifts the spacing of the characters immediately adjacent to the pivot, so I anchored the pivot character and allowed the rest of the word to extend freely from both sides. What stood out to me as a major difference was pacing though - a fl…
Yes, DuoBook is a language learning app, so I added RSVP as an add-on feature for re-reading the stories in another language. It’s not the main experience. My idea was that the learners can do a slow turn with the main reader, and then a quick read afterwards if they want to. Honestly, I spent at least a week for the pivot alignment but at the end I accepted once in hundred words it’s shifted a bit. I might go back i…
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Re: Show HN: ReadKinetic – a free, local-first speed reader for your own books
#57Sounds like a pointless endeavour to me. This infinite efficiency quest for speed reading is chief pursued by those who don't read regularly, and so don't understand that ones comprehension comes from the pauses, the page turns, and the backtracks which make up reading traditionally. If one has no time to digest, are they truly reading a book or just an impromptu script?
Re: Show HN: ReadKinetic – a free, local-first speed reader for your own books
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thanks, that's the detail I was most hoping someone would pick up on. It started as a flat interval and felt terrible. Every word got the same slot, so sentences never landed and it read like a stock ticker. Now there's a base duration from the WPM setting, with per word multipliers on top: 3x on sentence-ending punctuation, 2x on commas and semicolons, and an extra 0.7x if the word is 8 characters or longer. The pun…
I was just coming to ask about word frequency. I get that cadence being jumpy might be less enjoyable, but having a look ahead that validates if a “likely to be hard to one-shot” word is coming up and slightly ramps down the pace, might make this an even better tool! Love it!
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Re: Show HN: ReadKinetic – a free, local-first speed reader for your own books
#59Sounds like a pointless endeavour to me. This infinite efficiency quest for speed reading is chief pursued by those who don't read regularly, and so don't understand that ones comprehension comes from the pauses, the page turns, and the backtracks which make up reading traditionally. If one has no time to digest, are they truly reading a book or just an impromptu script?
A lot of what you're saying here resonates with me, I've touched on some of these points myself in this conversation. It definitely isn't great for anything that requires actual thought. Your comprehension does suffer as your reading speed increases. The whole industry surrounding this stuff really does oversell its capabilities, which is why I tend to set a practical limit rather than touting some massive number.
Where I think the argument starts to break down is by lumping all reading into a single category. Reading a novel for pleasure, and wading through forty pages of background information before you get to the five crucial ones, are fundamentally different activities. I'm a medical student, and the majority of my reading consists of that second type. You can't really "digest" a literature review in a way that makes it enjoyable. The only real goal is to get through it once, without getting bogged down.
Regarding the pauses, that's actually the area I put the most work into. It lingers three times longer at the end of sentences and twice as long at commas, specifically because a consistent, flat pace feels like reading a script rather than actual prose. And, of course, you can pause whenever you feel the need; there's no pressure to keep moving forward.
The part I'd really push back on is who this is actually for. The people who've given me the most in-depth feedback today are clearly avid readers. It's not really a tool for people who don't read much.
Re: Show HN: ReadKinetic – a free, local-first speed reader for your own books
#60This is really cool! The scrubbing feature is neat. I wonder if you could create a browser plugin for this? It could either: - Replicate the entire app in a panel. - Integrate with the app - so it forwards the selected text/page for the app to process. Perhaps another idea would be to offer a widget people can embed on their site like a "Speed Read This Page" button. I really enjoyed playing with it. If you could som…
You are the third person this afternoon asking for this extension, therefore the obvious next task is creating it. One person emailed me this morning asking to paste a url and have the article read to them, and it came up again in another thread here. Of your two options, I think the forwarding version is the better primitive. Selection is always a possibility, but right clicking on the highlighted text and telling i…
You are welcome!
If you do go ahead with the browser extension, let me know. I will keep an eye on this thread.