Emacs Typing Tutor | Hacker News Reader

Emacs Typing Tutor

connorberry.com

69 pointssea6ear12 comments

Recently I have been looking into learning how to type better as well. I can type at over 100 wpm without trying, but I do so in a weird way that I learned as a kid and never learned "proper" typing. I cringe at the thought of some of the stretching I force my fingers to do on a daily basis. While I don't yet have any RSI problems, I want to keep it that way so I looked into ergonomic keyboards and got an Ergodox EZ, a split ortholinear keyboard. I also looked into alternative layouts that were more ergonomic and set up Colemak Mod-DH on the keyboard.

To help learn how to type from scratch I used keybr.com. It teaches you common short English morphemes like "ing," "ent," etc. It starts you off with very few letters and slowly introduces new ones. I believe this aligns well with Yegge's guitar lick analogy that the author links to in the first paragraph, in contrast to the author's mention of the "speed-type" package which presents you with a real passage from a book.

After having used keybr.com I am not sure if the morpheme method has any advantage over the "full passage" method. In theory it makes sense, but I found that after months of practice I was still only presented with morphemes using a handful of letters, so typing any real words was still a big challenge. It also doesn't expose you to any punctuation which was a particular challenge due to the keyboard I used.

I would recommend giving keybr.com a try, but I wouldn't be surprised if something that uses real passages would be more effective.

As for my progress, I gave up after a couple months. I think I made the mistake of changing too many factors at once. I will try again learning "proper" QWERTY first, then consider switching to a split keyboard, and only then consider switching to Colemak.

I also used keybr when I was first learning. I found that I capped out pretty quickly there though, easily getting 100% for all the letters without going particularly fast and, as you mentioned, there's not much for punctuation and numbers. After I got good at keybr I moved on to gtypist and boy what a world of difference. Gtypist is significantly less forgiving and I still do poorly at it even after typing on the daily for years. It helped a lot for the time I was able to stick with it.

https://monkeytype.com is also an excellent alternative.

You can change the difficulty to fail on words, individual characters, or if you fall below a % threshold.

I can barely break 60 wpm and it took me a long time to get even that "fast" - whilst this is obvious, and also obviously biased, typing speed isn't that important. The only time I've seen typing speed matter professionally is in a role that is purely about scribing or data entry (including typing up text from papers into computers, a role that is largely redundant compared to yesteryear.)

HOWEVER.. that doesn't stop me wondering why I have such difficulty typing "fast".

I can burst type upto 110wpm on tests, in my profession of typing code and stuff, I don't hit anywhere that high because of the symbols etc. but the moment I do any prolonged typing of just words and punctuation.. meh.

I'm aware there is a great difference between typing out what you are thinking and typing direct from screen. The former I tend to burst type sentences, pause to think of the next sentence/fragment, then another burst, and so on. The typing lessons/tests/exercises are just so alien.

PS. I'm typing this on a ZSA Moonlander, which after the month or so of getting used to, I am never going back to a non-split, non-ortholinear keyboard again.

> I'm typing this on a ZSA Moonlander, which after the month or so of getting used to, I am never going back to a non-split, non-ortholinear keyboard again.

For me personally, the concave keywells of the Kinesis Advantage 2 are much more important than having a split. I guess because the fixed setup of the KA2 is just right for me. The concave wells mean that I do not have to stretch or move my hands for any of the keys. In Emacs, using "n" and "p" for next and previous requires no stretch at all using the KA2. My hand can stay completely relaxed while having one finger resting on n and one resting on p. The thumb clusters of the KA2 are also well suited to Emacs. I map Ctrl and Alt on both sides, so I can always choose an opposite-side thumb to press the modifier. I can also press both Ctrl and Alt simultaneously with my thumb, on either side. I would have given up on the default Emacs keybindings years ago if it were not for my KA2. I have one for work and one for home. It is by far the best keyboard I have ever used.

I recently bought a Kinesis Advantage 2. Could you be more specific about how you've mapped Ctl and Option? I mapped Delete and End in the left thumb cluster to Ctl and Option resp. What did you do?

I've mapped Ctrl to the big middle-lower thumb key on both sides; and Alt to the smaller middle-upper thumb key also on both sides. Space is right thumb rightmost big key, backspace is left thumb leftmost big key. Windows key and Delete are small keys; and do require a bit of a reach of the thumb. But I don't use them much (e.g. for delete, I'll do Ctrl+D). Enter I put in its usual place (i.e. not a thumb key). In Emacs I use Ctrl and Alt more than Enter, Space and Backspace. And I like to press them with opposite hands like shift, hence I have them on both sides. This helps avoid stretching.

When exported as a text file from the Advantage2, my mappings look like this:

  [=]>[`]
  [tab]>[\]
  [caps]>[tab]
  [up]>[down]
  [down]>[up]
  [`]>[=]
  [lalt]>[lwin]
  [ralt]>[delete]
  [\]>[']
  [lctrl]>[lalt]
  [delete]>[lctrl]
  [rctrl]>[lalt]
  [enter]>[rctrl]
  [']>[enter]

I'd argue the kinesis is a split board too - whilst technically not independent pieces the layout satisfies the criteria of a split board. In my humble opinion.

Is the kinesis sufficiently wide enough? I use my split board slightly wider than shoulder width. I'm also a big guy (as broad - 25inch yoke width)

I agree though, a concave keywell would be a big plus - in conjunction with ortholinear and split board.

> Is the kinesis sufficiently wide enough? I use my split board slightly wider than shoulder width.

It's definitely narrower than my shoulder width, but I don't mind the slight turn-in of my hands, my wrists are still straight. I can still rest my elbows on the chair arms and type.

Even if your wrists are straight, what are your shoulders and shoulder blades doing? How do they sit in relation to your spine? The kinetic chain is more than just hands and wrists

I used keybr a bit when learning Workman. It was handy to display a virtual keyboard and see the layout for day 1 while I learned the keys. Overall I felt the site was annoying, though. Lots of gibberish that never felt quick or comfortable to type, and the stats it gives you always seemed a bit questionable. My favorite methods for improving are a mix of full-immersion (continue to use irc, email, your text editor, etc.) and monkeytype.

I was also on a split ergo keyboard (Pinky4) while learning Workman and found that enabling all the symbols and numbers on monkeytype helped me solidify muscle memory for less-used keys. I feel more comfortable typing numbers on this keyboard than I think I ever did on a row-staggered keyboard. I put the settings this way very early in the process, so now in the 100wpm+ area I don't get totally thrown off typing parens, quotes, or numbers. They're practically equal to letters for me.

Would love to see a demo of this being used, perhaps with a camera feed of the keyboard alongside a screen capture of emacs - kind of like some of the typing demos by contemporary keyboard enthusiasts[0].

Personally I've been happy with GNU Typist (AKA gtypist)[1] because it's slim, cross-platform, doesn't depend on a browser, and is simple to extend.

[0] https://youtu.be/pXT89jnAz7k

[1] https://www.gnu.org/savannah-checkouts/gnu/gtypist/gtypist.h...

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