Typing tutor

thokr

After typing on a keyboard for decades, RSI-like tenderness and numbness in your hands is not uncommon. One of the best solutions is to change your keyboard, specifically to a split keyboard with a different layout and with keys laid out in a vertical grid. The only problem with this approach is that you then have reverse years of muscle memory while remaining productive, and this is where software typing tutors can help. A software typing tutor hugely helps in this situation by forcing you to practice typing, which you really should do when you get a new keyboard. But it can of course help at any time and help complete beginners too. But some of the best typing tutors are online, with https://www.keybr.com being a particular favorite, and this obviously has privacy and convenience ramifications. If you want to make it more fun, we also recommend a proprietary game called Epistory – Typing Chronicles, but there's also a few native Linux tools that can help, including the super-fresh thokr.

A simple, offline, command-line typing tutor, thokr includes 200, 1,000, and 10,000 common-word dictionaries, currently only in English. It's simple, but the project has only just started, and what's already there is almost enough. It first constructs a random, nonsensical sentence which you then need to type as quickly as possible. Every character you get correct is lit green, or if you make a mistake, red. If you do make a mistake, you can delete the error and type again. When you've finished typing the sentence, you're presented with a histogram of your typing speed over the time you were typing. It's simple but addictive, and you find yourself quickly typing r to retry and beat your current score. In the background, the statistics for each typing challenge are being written to a log.csv file that you can easily load into a spreadsheet to chart your progress.

Project Website

https://github.com/coloradocolby/thokr

The new thokr is already a great little typing trainer, but popular alternatives include the more established Monkeytype and Ttyper.

Budgeting