Blind mode

[GoogleCodeExporter]

My suggestion is that amphetype has a 'blind' typing mode. What you type
doesn't appear in the bottom half of the typer window. You have no feedback
of what you've typed until you reach the end of the text. At this point
your wpm and errors are shown. Rather than explain the idea myself, he is
what a guy on 43things concluded:

"""
I managed to gain 3 wpm today after an epiphany led me to try a new type of
drill. The epiphany occurred after reading about Barbara Blackburn, the
world’s fastest typist. She learned to type on a Dvorak typewriter in 1938.
Her error frequency was supposedly two-tenths of one percent.

My epiphany was that she became such an accurate typist because in 1938 the
penalty (in terms of lost time & productivity) of making a typing error was
huge. Liquid Paper didn’t exist back then, so you pretty much had to
re-type the whole page. Today, the cost of mistyping a letter is minimal –
you just hit the backspace key – so there is not much motivation to focus
on accuracy.

This epiphany led me to try a new type of drill, one that would force me to
type things correctly the first time and be less reliant on the backspace key.

The drill is blind typing pangrams. I mentioned pangrams a few posts ago. A
pangram is just a sentence that contains every letter of the alphabet.
There are lots of web pages out there with dozens of pangrams (including
the Wikipedia article on Pangram). Blind typing is typing without seeing
the letters you press appear on the screen. For example, when you are
typing in a password field and you only see bullet characters appear, you
are blind typing.

Blind typing requires you to really concentrate on accuracy, because you
can’t check to see that the character you typed was correct. I found that
blind typing forced me to shift from speed to accuracy. Typing pangrams
ensured that I covered all the characters on the keyboard. After just blind
typing a dozen or so pangrams, I found that my accuracy had improved
dramatically.

To do this drill just create a new document in your favorite text editor
and position the window so that it is mostly off screen. Then bring up a
web page with lots of pangrams on it and start typing those pangrams into
that document. You won’t be able to see what you are typing as you are
typing it, but you will be able to check what you typed later by dragging
the window back onto the screen.
"""

link:

http://www.43things.com/entries/view/3132970

Original issue reported on code.google.com by simonhar...@gmail.com on 6 Jan 2009 at 6:19

[GoogleCodeExporter]

I plan to change the typer so that you type text in a sort of "overwrite" mode 
--
instead of having two separate places for input and output, there will be only 
one,
where the color (or whatever) of the text changes as you type it. In this mode 
it
would be a lot easier to do blind mode or similar than the way it's currently 
set up
(because with the current setup I'd want to use minimum edit distance or 
something as
a metric, but then I'd have a headache figuring out exactly what keys to count 
as
errors etc.).

Original comment by tristesse on 9 Jan 2009 at 5:39

• Changed state: Accepted

[GoogleCodeExporter]

Similar to Typeracer then? That makes sense. Maybe you could have three options:

1. Highlight current character - as hi-games.net and many others do.
2. Highlight current word - like typeracer.
3. Do not highlight - aka blind mode.

Personally, I have always found programs that highlight the current character 
highly
distracting. I find that it's really difficult to focus on the word when the
character is bright red (or whatever), but for a typist who is learning it is
probably helpful to begin with.

Anyway, good luck tristesse and thanks again.

Original comment by simonhar...@gmail.com on 9 Jan 2009 at 5:50

[GoogleCodeExporter]

I would say that hi-games does not highlight. It has separate input only the 
lines of
the input and text display are interwoven. Typeracer highlights in the text but 
it
too has separate input.

What I wanted is to have the text display BE the input (as if you're typing in
overwrite mode) so that your eyes only ever have one exact place to focus. For
example you'de be able to set the foreground / background / decoration of text 
that's
been typed, untyped text, and errors, etc. Maybe have an optional "cursor" of 
some
kind. To me this sounds perfect but if people (like yourself) find it too weird 
or
distracting I suppose I could also work on interwoven text/input like on 
hi-games,
since that's pretty close to what I want anyway as you can "practically" view 
both
text and input without really moving the focus of your eye.

I don't like the current way where the input is all the way at the bottom. I 
only did
it that way because it was very quick and easy. I always just look at the text 
anyway
and merely use the change of color in the periphery as a visual cue to hit 
backspace.
So basically that whole box of text input where I type is a waste of space for 
me anyway.

Original comment by tristesse on 10 Jan 2009 at 3:06

[GoogleCodeExporter]

It makes sense to overwrite the text as you have said. As long as there is an 
option
to have the text not change at all - the blind mode. 

Another suggestion, I can put this as a new issue if you wish. An option to 
hide your
speed. This would enable the user to focus exclusively on accuracy. 

Original comment by simonhar...@gmail.com on 11 Jan 2009 at 4:13

[GoogleCodeExporter]

Well some kind of marker has to be there to show you where you are in the text.
Whether that will be done by a cursor of some kind or change of text/bg color, 
would
be a user option.

Hide your speed? Like from all the tables? I'm not sure I would ever implement 
such a
thing. I wouldn't say it would "enable" the user to focus exclusively on 
accuracy,
because the user is already enabled to do that. It's more like putting one more
obstacle between him and the "temptation" that is looking at the WPM numbers? 
If he
doesn't care about WPM then he doesn't care. If he cares, then it's a difference
between looking or toggle the option back on to look... If accuracy is all that
matters then simply put 100.0 as an accuracy demand on all texts and 0.0 on 
WPM. That
too "forces" a focus on accuracy, much more adamantly than hiding WPM data 
(which
would be collected anyway, and is nice (better, imo) for seeing progress in 
"the long
run"). If one find oneself being tempted or psychologically affected by 
glancing at
the WPM numbers, then maybe change the order of the colums (by dragging) and 
manually
hide them beyond the view of the tables...?

Original comment by tristesse on 11 Jan 2009 at 7:19

[GoogleCodeExporter]

Yes, I realise now that suggesting hiding speed was a bad idea. As you say, the
accuracy requirement can be adjusted very easily (I have mine set to 99%). 

"Well some kind of marker has to be there to show you where you are in the text.
Whether that will be done by a cursor of some kind or change of text/bg color, 
would
be a user option."

Ah yes. But the point of the blind mode I suggested is that there is no cursor, 
no
highlight, just the text. It is equivalent to working on a typewriter, writing 
copy.
You have the text to be copied to your left and you read the copy whilst 
typing. Once
you have reached the end of the text, you check for errors. In this way, if you 
make
any errors, you have to practice correcting them next time. This is quite 
different
from being alerted to errors at the time. Of course there must be a way to let 
the
typist check their current position in the text, maybe the control or a 
function key
would highlight the next character to be typed (if you were distracted). 

Original comment by simonhar...@gmail.com on 11 Jan 2009 at 9:19

[GoogleCodeExporter]

OK, I think I fully understand what you mean by complete blind mode now, but
unfortunately I don't think such a mode will be easy to implement.

What I had in mind was plain text that you type in overwrite mode. A simple 
cursor
(like a thin line underneath the current character) to show you where you are. 
No
feedback on errors at all (except at the end). In my mind this is very 
unobtrusive
and indeed similar to password fields which will generally give you a "*" as you
enter a character to give you *some* visual feedback that you actually have 
typed a
single character (didn't miss the key, didn't mess up and type 2 chars for 1), 
etc.

The reason "completely blind" is hard, apart from the user-interface perspective
(users thinking "am I typing at all? what's going on"), is that what if you 
type an
extra character (or miss one) in the beginning, and then you will be off-by-one 
for
the entire remainder of the text. All the subsequent words and characters won't 
match
up and they will all be counted as errors with the naive approach to finding 
errors
one can use if one can assume that the user knows where he is when he's typing. 
Like
I mentioned in the first comment, there are algorithms (like minimum edit 
distance)
to find how many "edits" (deletions, insertions, changes) are necessary to 
change one
text into another and one could equate that as number of mistakes, but in its 
plain
form it doesn't give you exactly where the errors occurred and sometimes it's 
hard to
determine (combinations of both inserts, deletes, and changes near each other). 
But
this is one of my fundamental principles behind amphetype -- to give info on 
mistakes
and problem words. However, it sounds like a nice thing to think about.

Original comment by tristesse on 11 Jan 2009 at 9:53

[GoogleCodeExporter]

Hi all,

I'm a new user to Amphetype. I am using it to learn and get faster with the 
Dvorak 
layout. While I do see the point of something like this, wouldn't it be a lot 
simpler 
(and basically achieve the same purpose as the original poster wants) to just 
provide 
an option to disable the Backspace key? If this is done, perhaps we could also 
add 
another accuracy rating for those who don't use this option, which reports 
accuracy 
(allowing backspace) and true accuracy (which would be the same as the current 
accuracy rating). So, say if you made typos on half of a text, but corrected 
them 
all, your accuracy (allowing backspace) would be 100%, but your true accuracy 
would 
only be 50%. This could be useful to allow you to see how many typos you were 
able to 
catch!

In my opinion, I think a blind mode would end up being under-used, and it 
doesn't 
actually equate (as the guy on 43things and the original poster claim) to how 
typists 
had to learn on a typewriter - after all, you could still see the things you 
had 
typed by looking at the left hand side of the line you were typing. Truly blind 
typing would have been equivalent to using no ink, which I don't think anybody 
ever 
did. It seems to me like trying to type blind would be as useful as typing 
without 
switching your computer on, i.e. purely as a muscle memory trainer, and even 
then, 
the validity and usefulness of such a method is questionable.

I therefore honestly think that having an option to make Backspace do nothing, 
is all 
we need to accomplish the original poster's purposes.

Original comment by ashley.k...@gmail.com on 13 Mar 2010 at 1:24