wpm 1.50.4

Console app for measuring typing speed in words per minute (WPM)

wpm is a UNIX terminal program for measuring and improving your typing speed, which is measured in words per minute (WPM). It depends only on standard Python libraries, particularly curses, and thus works with Python 2.7, 3+, PyPy and probably others.

Features

• Over 4900 quotes in the database, shamelessly stolen from typeracerdata.com

• Extremely low typing latency!

• Timer starts when you strike the first key

• Completed text is darkened, helping you to focus ahead

• Keep separate stats for, e.g. type of keyboard, layout etc.

• Saves race scores in a CSV file that is a superset of TypeRacer’s export format. Loads fine in Excel as well.

• Launches quickly in your terminal window for “in-between moments”

Demo

How to install

The recommended way is to install via PyPi

$ pip install wpm

The above usually requires sudo. If you don’t want to install it system-wide, you can use pip install wpm --user.

Remember to check for upgrades with pip install --upgrade wpm. You can also install it from the source repository with

$ python setup.py install [--user]

To just test the app without installing, type make run.

How to run

Just type wpm to start the program. The timer will start when you press the first key. At any time, you can hit ESCAPE to quit.

You can backspace for the current word you’re editing, if you make a mistake. Mistakes will lower the accuracy score.

If you have problems finding the wpm file, you can also start it by typing python -m wpm. You can also see options with python -m wpm --help.

Calculating WPM

The WPM is calculated by dividing characters per second by five and then multiplying that with 60. This is a well-known formula, but gives slightly higher scores than on sites like typeracer.com. It is, however, good enough to gauge your typing speed. And it works offline, and with your own texts.

Regarding TypeRacer, I really suggest everyone check it out. I use this program merely to warm up before heading over to typeracer.com, where you can race against others.

How to get the lowest typing latency

Run outside of tmux, and use a really speedy terminal window. On my macOS system, I found the best latency using the built-in Terminal.app, which easily beats iTerm. I also found the Kitty terminal to provide very low latency.

I also feel that running it under PyPy provides a little lower latency as well, but I haven’t timed it. You can install it under PyPy with pypy -m pip install wpm.

On Linux, the ultimate typing latency is achieved if you open up one of the virtual consoles. For example, hit CTRL+ALT+F2 and log in, set your TERM=xterm-color and run wpm. Many terms also have quite a high latency. Try using uxterm if you need to run it inside X.

Loading custom texts

If you want to type a custom text, run

$ wpm --load yourfile.txt

If you use --load, the author will currently be empty, the title will be the basename of the file. The text ID will be its inode, just to make them somewhat unique, so your stats will work.

You can also bundle up several texts into a single JSON file, using wpm --load-json yourfile.json. It must have the following format:

[
  {
    "author": "Author Name",
    "title": "Title of Work",
    "text": "The text to type here ..."
    "id": 123,
  },
  ...
]

The id is an optional integer. If you leave it out, an increasing, zero-based integer will be used.

Format of race history

wpm will save scores in a CSV file in ~/.wpm.csv. This file can be loaded directly into Excel. It uses the same format as TypeRacer, with the addition of a few extra columns at the end. That means is should be possible to use existing TypeRacer score history tools with this file with minor modifications.

The column order is:

Column	Datatype	Explanation
race	int	Race number, always increasing and tied to timestamp
wpm	float	The average WPM for that quote that single time
accuracy	float	From 0 to 1, where 1 means no mistakes
rank	int	Always 1
racers	int	Always 1
text_id	int	Item number of text in given database
timestamp	str	UTC timestamp in strptime format %Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S.%f
database	str	Either “default” or the basename of the file used
keyboard	str	A user supplied tag for that score

Should there be any problem saving or loading the score history, it will copy the existing file into ~/.wpm.csv.backup and create a new one.

If you use –keyboard=… to specify a keyboard, the next time wpm is launched, it will assume that this is the keyboard you are still using. Just specify –keyboard=… again. The keyboard setting is really just a string label you can use to tag races. For example, you could call the keyboard realforce-colemak or cherry-red-qwerty and use that as a basis to perform statistical analysis on your typing performance with various setups.

The ~/.wpmrc file

The first time you start wpm, it writes a .wpmrc file to your home directory. It contains user settings that you can change. They are given in the table below.

Section	Name	Default	Description
curses	escdelay	15	Time in ms to wait for follow-up key after ESC
curses	window_timeout	20	Time in ms until giving up waiting for a keypress. If negative, wait forever.
wpm	confidence_interval_percent	95	The confidence interval percentage to use for WPM and accuracy reports
wpm	max_quote_width	-1	If positive, wrap text at this width
wpm	spaces_to_expand_tabs_to	1	Number of spaces to expand tabs to
xterm-256color			Color codes for 256-color terminals
xterm-color			Color codes for ordinary terminals

License

Copyright 2017, 2018 Christian Stigen Larsen

Distributed under the GNU Affero General Public License (AGPL) v3 or later. See the file LICENSE.txt for the full license text. This software makes use of open source software.

The quotes database is not covered by the AGPL!