3 A speed reading mode for Emacs.
10 The story continues at [[https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html][gnu.org]]
14 Put spray.el into a "load-path"ed directory, and load it in your init
19 Then you can start spraying from the cursor position with =M-x
20 spray-mode=. Binding some keys may also be useful.
22 : (global-set-key (kbd "<f6>") 'spray-mode)
26 In spray-mode buffers, following commands are available.
28 - =spray-start/stop= (SPC) ::
29 pause or resume spraying
31 - =spray-backward-word= (h, <left>) ::
32 pause and back to the last word
34 - =spray-forward-word= (l, <right>) ::
35 inverse of =spray-backward-word=
37 - =spray-faster= (f) ::
40 - =spray-slower= (s) ::
43 - =spray-quit= (q, <return>) ::
49 You may customize spray by modifying following items:
51 - [Variable] spray-wpm
52 - [Variable] spray-height
53 - [Variable] spray-margin-top
54 - [Variable] spray-margin-left
55 - [Variable] spray-ramp
56 - [Keymap] spray-mode-map
57 - [Face] spray-base-face
58 - [Face] spray-accent-face
60 ** If your emacs color theme does not work well with spray
62 You could create a function to toggle the emacs theme to one that
63 works with spray, and then put that in the spray mode hook. For example:
65 #+begin_src emacs-lisp
66 (defun toggle-night ()
68 (if (equal (car custom-enabled-themes) 'naquadah)
69 (override-theme 'leuven)
70 (override-theme 'naquadah)))
71 (add-hook 'spray-mode-hook 'toggle-night)
74 Alternatively, one user found ways to setup a single buffer with better colors, using
75 - http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/BufferBackgroundColor
76 - https://github.com/vic/color-theme-buffer-local
78 He also found this library useful:
79 https://github.com/ShingoFukuyama/ov.el
82 ** Feedback, bugs, contributions, all welcome
84 All on: https://gitlab.com/iankelling/spray
86 There's lots of features and enhancements to do. The algorithm and interface could certainly be improved in various ways.
89 ** Similar emacs package: speedread
91 Available in marmalade or [[https://github.com/vapniks/speedread/blob/master/speedread.el][github]] It has several nice features and does
92 not align on an accent character. Eventually I'd like to merge the two
95 ** Deficiencies in similar projects which spray.el solves:
97 The algorithm is inspired from [[https://github.com/Miserlou/OpenSpritz][OpenSpritz]].
99 Mostly as of June 28, 2014.
101 For all other projects:
102 - It is very difficult to save your place and come back later. Emacs has
103 lots of built in features like bookmarks or just making a note which
105 - No keybinds. This is especially useful for common, quickly used
106 functionality like pause and back up.
109 - [[https://github.com/jbmartinez/speed-readerff][speed-readerff]] firefox extension.
110 - [[https://github.com/cameron/squirt][squirt]] javascript bookmarklet.
111 - [[https://github.com/Miserlou/OpenSpritz][OpenSpritz]] javascript bookmarklet.
112 - Very difficult selecting where to start / what exactly to read.
113 - Very difficult to figure out where you are within a document.
115 - [[https://github.com/chaimpeck/spray][spray]] website you paste text into.
116 - Very difficult to figure out where you are within a document.
118 - [[https://github.com/xypiie/spread0r][spread0r]] Perl program.
119 - No apparent way to resize text.
120 - Very difficult to figure out where you are within a document.
122 - [[https://github.com/the-happy-hippo/sprits-it][sprits-it]] website or bookmarklet. Looks most promising of the web based projects.
123 - Very difficult selecting where to start / what exactly to read.
124 - Somewhat difficult to figure out where you are in a document.
126 Programs that I, Ian Kelling, didn't try, and why. They also probably have a lot of the problems listed above.
127 - https://github.com/pasky/speedread No simple way to resize text from default of too small.
128 - https://github.com/ds300/jetzt Chrome plugin: Chrome is proprietary, and its open source version is unfriendly to linux distros so they don't package it, and it's readme does not list any benefit to this program over others.
129 - https://github.com/Fr4ncis/openspritz-ios ios program. I don't have an ios device, and this does not appear to have any compelling features.
130 - https://github.com/OnlyInAmerica/OpenSpritz-Android android program. If I knew how to quickly move reading material to my phone, I would try this out. But, it's readme shows that the program is pretty sparse and would have some of the same problems as listed above, so not worth it.
133 Downsides compared to similar projects:
134 - The emacs learning curve.
135 - Would be hard to get running on a phone.
140 *** Main algorithm code location
141 In =./spray.el=, the functions =spray--word-at-point=, =spray--update= and =spray-start= contain the main algorithm of choosing a word, an accent character and an interval to display it. Word splitting is also duplicated the same way as in those functions throughout ./spray.el.
143 *** Algorithm translated from code to english
145 Words are split at space, tab, newline, and emdash characters.
147 Each word is displayed for (60 / the choosen wpm) seconds, except if the
148 word ends with =.!?,;:—= or is greater than 9 characters long, in which
149 case it is displayed for twice as long.
151 When started, an added delay is optionally added, based on the
152 spray-ramp variable. See it's documentation for details.
154 The accent location is chosen as the nth character in a word, depending
155 on its length, based on the following table
156 | length | accent position |