edit: I’ve given up on this for the time being, for several reasons, all of which relate to the fact that V is in version 0.2.x. The termainal library sucks, the compiler sucks, the tooling sucks, etc. I’m sure it’ll get better, and then I may pick this back up.
This is an early WIP touch-typing program written in V. I envision it as a cross-platform (Win10/GNU/Mac) console application. It should render images with multiple supported protocols (sixel, Kitty, w3m, iterm’s, etc.). The typing interfaces should be inspired by keybr.com, monkeytype.com, and typingclub.com
Existing touch-typing trainers have several problems. The sophisticated ones attempt to teach typing incrementally by focusing on home-row and bigrams, but those assume a QWERTY layout. Some provide support for alternatives like Colemak, but no typing trainer can possibly keep up with trends and cutting-edge layouts.
Even if they could, there is another problem. QMK keyboards are constantly increasing in popularity, and features like combos and tap dance that fundamentally alter the way letters are inputted for improved ergonomics are difficult to account for.
There is no general solution to this besides allowing users to input an arbitrary keyboard layout, and adapting the lessons programatically for whatever data they provide.
It is also challenging to quantify word frequency for informing lessons. Many typing tutors use Google Books as a source of English to assess word frequency, because it is a sizable and accessible repository of modern English text. However, this is a naive source because most texts it contains do not reflect the real text that humans mostly read and write. For that reason, I will aggregate word frequency from fimfiction.net.