NPTO (a tool for finding bottlenecks in your typing speed / accuracy)

[son]

I hung around typing speed websites a while, mainly because they're fun, but also to train my typing speed. Pretty soon, though, to get more tangible improvement, I started wanting more in-depth info on my typing than just the WPM and accuracy % figures the sites give. Namely, I wanted to find out which words I was misspelling most often, which specific keys I was taking the most time to hit, which keys I was most likely to fudge up, etc., so I could focus on these bottlenecks and improve my WPM and accuracy that way.

For that purpose,  I wrote NPTO (short for Näppäinpainelemistilastointiohjelma). It's a typing test program whose main purpose is to output various per-key typing statistics along with the more common WPM info. Since I think NPTO is potentially a useful program for all, I made it into a release version.

You can check out a short demo video and download links (it's free) for 64-bit Linux/Windows on the NPTO site, http://personal.inet.fi/muoti/eimuoti/npto/.

Below is a screenshot of the Windows version. If you've spent a fair amount of time on the 10FastFingers typing test, NPTO may be particularly useful for you, since it uses the 10FF top 200 English word list by default.



Feel free to leave feedback below for features or improvements you want to see implemented in the program. The main limitation, currently, is that the per-key statistics in NPTO only support the QWERTY layout (and more specifically, the Finnish/Swedish QWERTY layout - though this layout differs very little from eg. the US/UK one in terms of key placement).

[son]

Not much noise around this one yet. Do we not have any 10FastFingers users floating around?

In any case, the program was updated to version 2.5 some days ago, check out the gripping video (with sound) on YouTube: www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFU433DDMuE

The other update is that the Windows version is no longer fully gratis. The Linux version remains free, however. And since it's free for a free operating system, I reckon's a good deal.

[VoteForDavid]

Wellsir, I was going to say "oops sorry I missed this thread I'll download that and give it a try and maybe have useful feedback for you" but to pay for something that yields only minor benefit . . . not so much.

But in all honesty, good luck with that.

[son]

You don't have to pay for NPTO - it's free. That is, the four weeks I spent creating it on Linux (my daily OS) I'm giving away for free. It's work I like to do, so I don't see it as work, and thus I give it away for free.

But tediously porting each new version onto some other platform is work I don't enjoy, and neither would you. And because straight-up work isn't how I want to spend my free time, something has to compensate, and in this case, it's a unit price of $7.

As said, paying for NPTO is entirely optional: the program is provided for free for a free operating system. If you don't have Linux installed, you can get VirtualBox for Windows, and run an Ubuntu live image as if you were running a program on Windows. Saves you the $7, and is fine by me, too.

It's worth noting that I gave the same VirtualBox advice to a person who was asking for a Mac port of NPTO. (I don't own a mac, so can't develop for it.) His (predictable) response was that the whole VirtualBox thing would be too much work, and that NPTO isn't interesting or useful enough to bother. But the problem with his stance is obvious: if NPTO isn't useful enough for that person to spend a few moments installing VirtualBox, they don't have a good case to say that I should spend a far greater amount of time porting it over for them at no cost.

As far as the feedback goes, consider that $7 would hire a programmer for about 15 minutes, then consider how many multiples of $7 I'm likely to receive vs. how many weeks I spend working on the program. Then consider that most people who get NPTO will download the Linux version, which is free, and will get whatever benefit the program gives them. As such, feedback is arguably more of a community service than a gift to me.

[VoteForDavid]

I can't argue with you when you're right.  But until I stop getting free licenses for new Windows versions . . .

[davkol]

As said, paying for NPTO is entirely optional: the program is provided for free for a free operating system.

For the record, there's a huge difference between "free as in freedom" (GNU, Linux) and "free as in free beer". I can't find the source of NPTO anywhere. The app is quite nice otherwise, and it might be interesting to merge it with Amphetype.

[son]

The initial huge difference is whether you subscribe to Stallman's notions. I've never been big on looking into other people's sources, and the thought of sharing my own is wayward.

[davkol]

The difference is that a freeware app can hardly be distributed by some downstreams, ported to a different architecture (RPi anyone?) and eventually becomes unusable, after the author abandons it—it can't be forked like the previously mentioned Amphetype.

Also, claiming that it's "a free app for a free operating system", when the word "free" means something completely different in either case, is… hmm… misleading?

[VoteForDavid]

FOSS is a relatively new concept.  It is entirely the prerogative of the owner of the software whether to make it open.  Freeware is, for 99.99% of all users, all they'll ever need. 

One of the points of this thread is OP wants feedback to implement improvements as they see fit.  This is not the same as letting just-anyone do whatever they want with your pet code and can yield superior results.

[son]

The difference is that a freeware app can hardly be distributed by some downstreams, ported to a different architecture (RPi anyone?) and eventually becomes unusable, after the author abandons it—it can't be forked like the previously mentioned Amphetype.

Also, claiming that it's "a free app for a free operating system", when the word "free" means something completely different in either case, is… hmm… misleading?

As I said, you make a distinction between free and free if you've adopted the Stallman ideology. Better not to assume everyone has, and best not to indict them as if they have. But when you're really into semantics, pay attention to the quotes you put out as well: the statement was that "the program is provided for free for a free operating system," and in this particular case the context is a fairly clear indicator of which freeness is being attributed to NPTO.

[davkol]

What if I paid for the free operating system? I have in fact paid for a commercial GNU/Linux distribution a couple of times (Mandrake and Ubuntu boxes, SLED support). Does it mean that I shouldn't use NPTO on them? The license doesn't say so. I smell a contradiction.

Anyway, I don't care. I found NPTO quite nice, thus I was initially interested in running it on my ARM-based system, considered sending some usability-related patches, etc. It's not possible. Farewell I guess?

[son]

Yeah, and what about all the free Windows previews, release candidates, etc.? I don't know, I guess for free copies of Windows and for paid copies of Linux, NPTO is $100,000.99 until someone comes up with a better way to deal with it.

Cool you found it useful. You're a developer, though, and the licence is very permissive, so I'm sure you can put something together even as is.