- If you have marmalade-repo.org, this speedread is part of the emacs packages you can install. Just type M-x package-install speedread marmalade
- Otherwise download the library from here Lisp:speedread, and put it in a directory in the emacs load path, like ~/.emacs.d
- Add (require ‘speedread) in your ~/.emacs file
Concept: load a (text) file into a buffer for speedreading.
Position the cursor to the point at which you wish to start reading and give the command
M-x speedread
The file will be displayed to you in the echo area (!) a bit at a time, in “flashes” with a delay between each flash. The customization variables control the minimum size (in characters) of each flash group, and the pause between groups.
After a certain number of groups have been displayed (there is a customization variable for this too) there is a ‘hard’ pause. This is quite necessary to avoid incredible eye fatigue!
At this point you can continue reading, stop, or change some reading parameters. To continue, press spacebar or the ENTER key. To quit, type ‘q’ to quit and save your place with a bookmark, or ‘e’ to exit speed-reading without saving your current place. (Side effect: all bookmarks get saved, not just this one. Be aware.) The commands described immediately below are also active. ‘?’ or ‘h’ will get you a help screen.
Rather than waiting for a pause between flashes, if you like, you can alter the speed, the flash group size, or the number of flashes on-the-fly at just about any time.
When starting a speedread session, if a bookmark exists you are asked if you wish to use it. If you choose not to use it, the display starts at the current cursor position.
Newline characters are converted to spaces. This causes a little weirdness at times but leaving newlines intact makes a big mess.
Again, tune the display parameters! You may find that as your speed-reading skills improve you can increase the number of characters in a flash group, and/or decrease the pause time between groups.
Project Gutenberg is a fabulous source of texts to use.
Since speed is very much system dependent these params MUST be fine-tuned to get any sort of acceptable results. Advice: do it on-the-fly and then when you get what you like save as permanent customized values. Set the size of the flash group and the delay between groups.
- ‘f’ : to go 20% faster,
- ’s’ : to go 20% slower,
- ‘w’ : to widen the flash group 20%,
- ‘n’ : to narrow it 20%,
- ‘m’ : for 20% more flashes between pauses,
- ‘l’ : for 20% less flashes between pauses,
- ‘b’ : to go back and repeat the current set of flashes,
- ‘r’ : to completely restart from whatever point in the buffer you began the session.
- ‘q’ : to quit and save the bookmark at point;
- ‘e’ : to exit without saving the bookmark.
Below are complete command list:
- `speedread’ : Speedread a buffer by timed flashing of groups of words in the echo area
- `speedread-faster’ : Increase reading speed temporarily
- `speedread-narrower’ : Narrow flash-group temporarily
- `speedread-help’ : Get speedreading command help
- `speedread-save-changes’ : save all customization variables changed this Emacs session
Customizable Options:
Below are customizable option list:
- `speedread-chars’ : Minimum characters per flash group (an integer) default = 20
- `speedread-delay-milliseconds’ : Milliseconds of delay between flashes (an integer) default = 300
- `speedread-end-sentence-delay-milliseconds’ : Pause between sentences in milliseconds (an integer) default = 500
- `speedread-final-delay-milliseconds’ : Milliseconds to wait before exiting after reaching end of buffer default = 2000
- `speedread-top-window-size’ : How much of the frame to use for displaying the original buffer whilst speedreading. default = 5
- `speedread-font-size-scale-factor’ : Scale factor for size of font default = 2.0
- `speedread-text-justification’ : Justification of text in speedread buffer. default = (quote center)
- `speedread-end-sentence-regexp’ : Regular expression to match with end of sentence words. default = “\(\.\|\:\)\(\n\|>\|)\|’\|"\)*$”
All of the above can customized by: M-x customize-group RET speedread RET
The parameters ‘out of the box’ tend to result in roughly 600 words per minute. This is probably too fast for many people; adjust to suit. Don’t attempt too much speed initially or you will become very frustrated and probably give up. As you learn how to work with the technique you can build up the speed and the flash group size. On the other hand, push yourself a little. Go as fast as you can without losing comprehension. Different types of reading material will require different speed settings! You can read a scifi novel faster than you can read existential philosophy.
Your comments on both speed-reading, the flash technique, and the program itself are welcome. Write
chungkuo@chungkuo.org
I also have a Perl version of similar (older, less functional) code. If you want it let me know.