Comments on: Speed reading and my RSVP web application http://www.fsavard.com/flow/2008/10/speed-reading-and-my-rsvp-web-application/ Programming, personal knowledge management. Topics unstable. Thu, 01 Jul 2010 12:30:19 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0 By: Francois http://www.fsavard.com/flow/2008/10/speed-reading-and-my-rsvp-web-application/comment-page-1/#comment-3841 Francois Fri, 16 Jan 2009 14:23:04 +0000 http://www.fsavard.com/flow/?p=251#comment-3841 Hi Rick. As a former crazy-on-highlighting student, I can identify with the trend you outline :) I'm not quite sure, though, that I would've used an RSVP application to study back my highlights, as pausing to understand, relate concepts to each others etc. was too important. RSVP, and reading at higher speeds in general, for me, is best when reading lighter material. As for the cost, that's a very tricky question, speaking from a software engineering point of view. Technicalities: it clearly could not be made as an extension of a Web app like mine, since you're speaking of computer files (ODT, DOC, PDF...) which would need to be parsed by something other than pure client-side (browser-only) code. And the very act of (seriously) estimating the time/resources required to write a commercial-grade application such as RapidReader is hugely error-prone and complex. But if you really want to implement your idea, a simpler way I can see is to write macros to extract the highlights from the different formats and then use those extracted parts as input to an existing RSVP reader. That could be quite fast for Word/ODF (a simple loop over the words to extract those which are on a colored background), but I'm not familiar with PDF processing so I'm not sure how I'd proceed for that format. Hi Rick. As a former crazy-on-highlighting student, I can identify with the trend you outline :) I’m not quite sure, though, that I would’ve used an RSVP application to study back my highlights, as pausing to understand, relate concepts to each others etc. was too important. RSVP, and reading at higher speeds in general, for me, is best when reading lighter material.

As for the cost, that’s a very tricky question, speaking from a software engineering point of view. Technicalities: it clearly could not be made as an extension of a Web app like mine, since you’re speaking of computer files (ODT, DOC, PDF…) which would need to be parsed by something other than pure client-side (browser-only) code. And the very act of (seriously) estimating the time/resources required to write a commercial-grade application such as RapidReader is hugely error-prone and complex.

But if you really want to implement your idea, a simpler way I can see is to write macros to extract the highlights from the different formats and then use those extracted parts as input to an existing RSVP reader. That could be quite fast for Word/ODF (a simple loop over the words to extract those which are on a colored background), but I’m not familiar with PDF processing so I’m not sure how I’d proceed for that format.

]]> By: Rick http://www.fsavard.com/flow/2008/10/speed-reading-and-my-rsvp-web-application/comment-page-1/#comment-3826 Rick Fri, 16 Jan 2009 05:56:57 +0000 http://www.fsavard.com/flow/?p=251#comment-3826 Hi: Current: When studying, students highlight key learning material with a highlighter pen and then goes back and for study purposes, will go back and review only the highlighted material in the textbook. However, the student still reads the highlighted material at his regular speed because he is reading it from a textbook. The holy grail :-) Ideal: RSVP software that can read text and/or highlighted material , from pdf,word or .odt. This combination will significantly cut down on student learning time. Software Rapidreader.com is the only program I have found that comes close, but it is buggy and missing features. Cost? What would it cost to have something built similar to Rapidreader? Appearance is not important, but functionality is. :-) Thx Rick Vancouver Hi:
Current:
When studying, students highlight key learning material with a highlighter pen and then goes back and for study purposes, will go back and review only the highlighted material in the textbook. However, the student still reads the highlighted material at his regular speed because he is reading it from a textbook.

The holy grail :-)
Ideal: RSVP software that can read text and/or highlighted material , from pdf,word or .odt. This combination will significantly cut down on student learning time.

Software
Rapidreader.com is the only program I have found that comes close, but it is buggy and missing features.

Cost?
What would it cost to have something built similar to Rapidreader? Appearance is not important, but functionality is. :-)

Thx
Rick
Vancouver

]]> By: Francois http://www.fsavard.com/flow/2008/10/speed-reading-and-my-rsvp-web-application/comment-page-1/#comment-13 Francois Fri, 17 Oct 2008 17:19:23 +0000 http://www.fsavard.com/flow/?p=251#comment-13 I'm definetely interested in these developments. Mobile reading is a great application of the concept. Note to readers: Daniel contacted me to discuss this. I've put his contact info in the About tab of the speed reading app. If any of you is interested in helping for the mobile version, you can contact him at "dakh_rsvpmo AT dakhalsey . com". I’m definetely interested in these developments. Mobile reading is a great application of the concept.

Note to readers: Daniel contacted me to discuss this. I’ve put his contact info in the About tab of the speed reading app. If any of you is interested in helping for the mobile version, you can contact him at “dakh_rsvpmo AT dakhalsey . com”.

]]> By: Daniel http://www.fsavard.com/flow/2008/10/speed-reading-and-my-rsvp-web-application/comment-page-1/#comment-12 Daniel Fri, 17 Oct 2008 15:58:18 +0000 http://www.fsavard.com/flow/?p=251#comment-12 Wow! I was in the car for >40h this past weekend, and had the idea to write a JS speedreading app. I'd played around with Dictator and a few similar programs a while ago, and liked them, but found them a little limited in usefulness by their interfaces and need to copy and paste from other apps into them. I put the idea aside to incubate (and get back to "real" work, and was getting back to it today, when I thought "wait--someone's had to have done this already", and found that yes: you had, just days ago! Your program is almost exactly what I was thinking of, with a few exceptions, primarily based on my desire to eventually be able to use it on my phone. I'm working on adding line width-based grouping (which means a bit of re-coding, because of the way word grouping is done), and will probably strip down some of the interface, but you've done great work and I'll be glad to let you know how my adaptation goes. Wow! I was in the car for >40h this past weekend, and had the idea to write a JS speedreading app. I’d played around with Dictator and a few similar programs a while ago, and liked them, but found them a little limited in usefulness by their interfaces and need to copy and paste from other apps into them. I put the idea aside to incubate (and get back to “real” work, and was getting back to it today, when I thought “wait–someone’s had to have done this already”, and found that yes: you had, just days ago!

Your program is almost exactly what I was thinking of, with a few exceptions, primarily based on my desire to eventually be able to use it on my phone. I’m working on adding line width-based grouping (which means a bit of re-coding, because of the way word grouping is done), and will probably strip down some of the interface, but you’ve done great work and I’ll be glad to let you know how my adaptation goes.

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