A blazing-fast (possibly) speedreading program

sprd is super simple to run! Just run:

$ sprd -f file [-w wpm] [-c chunk_number] [-r resume_point]

sprd is maintained using the GNU autotools. To build, simply download the tarball, unzip it, and follow the ritual:

./configure
make
sudo make install

I was (as a RSVP-using speedreader myself) in search of a command-line based speedreading software. I found one well-made project, but it did not have some features I wanted (namely, chunking and the ability to read from a file). Therefore, I set about to write my own. In keeping with my own philosophy, I wanted to keep it elegant, fast, and minimal. Ideally, this means no libraries or external dependencies, and written in C/C++.

sprd has a good number of features that are common to all speedreaders, and a few that are (relatively) unique. They include:

• variable chunking
• adaptive WPM based on chunking
• static centering of text
• complied, not interpreted
• auto-centering output
• resuming from a point
• dynamically handeled sigterm
• Reading from stdin or a file

Some features that (if I have time) may be added are:

• built-in file decoders

As a side note, I wrote a .docx decoder called redocx that synergizes well with reading from Word document archives.

Though this is anecdotal, I personally can read with 100% comprehension at 1050 WPM using 2-word chunks.

All contributions are welcome! To contribute, fork the repo, make a branch with your new feature, push it to GitHub, and submit a PR. The autotools files are left in the repo, so you can make the build system easily.