Daktilo: Turn Your Keyboard into a Typewriter | Hacker News Reader

Daktilo: Turn Your Keyboard into a Typewriter

github.com

155 pointsorhunp60 comments

As an old fart who actually used a typewriter, I must point out that the bell does not ring when you press the carriage return. The bell rings when you are nearing the end of the line to warn you that you are bout to run out of paper.

On carriage return, the sound should be a slow swing of the heavy carriage physically returning.

This is odd, I could have sworn mine rang the bell when the carriage return returned to the start of the line, so it was more of a "swoooosh ding!", but I watched a video and you're right. Very odd.

The ding is your cue to return the carriage. You were well conditioned. :-P

The bell was rang (rung?) when you were around ten columns away from the right side of the paper, as a notification to the user to manually use the carriage return bar, or use the return key on the fancy electric typewriters.

> as a notification to the user to manually use the carriage return bar

It also, probably more so, was a signal to the user to start thinking about how to break the current line. You couldn’t type and, upon realizing the word you were typing didn’t fit the line, backspace and type a hyphen.

‘About ten columns’ then is a reasonable number. Of course, longer words exist and aren’t extremely rare, but those would have a reasonable hyphenation point that you could and would want to use.

On mine, the force of the carriage returning was enough that it jostled the bell and it rang softly. Perhaps that is what you were remembering?

Maybe this is your Mandela Effect moment?

Also, shift should make a sound, and both space and backspace obviously have their own sounds, which are different from typing a character.

I thought I heard shift sounds in the demo video?

Thanks for your comment! I created an issue about this: https://github.com/orhun/daktilo/issues/22

Chiming in to complement your amazing username.

that is the 2nd immediate thing i noticed about that post and 100% agree with you! :-)

Maybe a thunk, advancing to the next line if it's a powered typewriter.

Those IBM selectrics were overbuilt. They vibrated and hummed when turned on.

Our office still has a manual typewriter, and an IBM Selectric.

The bell rings when the Page Stops are reached. These can be manually set on the page. The bell rings, the typist plans for end of line, then they whack the bar and zzzzz-thunk the carriage returns.

Related, "Shift Happens is a beautifully designed history of how keyboards got this way":

> It's the 150th anniversary of the QWERTY keyboard, and Marcin Wichary has put together the kind of history and celebration this totemic object deserves. Shift Happens is a two-volume, 1,200-plus-page work with more than 1,300 photos, researched over seven years and cast lovingly into type and photo spreads that befit the subject.

* https://arstechnica.com/culture/2023/10/shift-happens-is-a-b...

If you're on macOS, a similar program named Klack[1] was featured on HN recently, too[2]. It's very polished and has a variety of different keyboard sounds among which to choose.

[1] https://tryklack.com/ [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37395370

Much better. Thank you.

Hacker News is no place for frivolous humor!

And yet … sometimes …

> daktilo ("typewriter" in Turkish, pronounced "DUCK-til-oh"

(Painfully obvious highlighting, all mine.)

So what we have here is a duck type writer helping you write code?

How much duck type would a duck typer with a duck type writer, type, if a duck typer had a duck type writer to type duck type?

(Citation: Nevermark, re. Dactilo, HN, 2023.)

Ok that’s out of the way.

Oh man, painfully obvious that this exploiter left an obvious exploit unexploited:

How much ducktype would a ducktype writer with a duck typewriter, type, if a ducktype writer had a duck typewriter to type ducktype?

I want to hear that at normal typing speed. I feel like, unless there are a good amount of slightly varied samples, it's going to have that TR-808 repetitive vibe going on ...

I was also put off by the static, repetitive sounds. My suggestion would be to record 5-10 sounds and pick randomly, slightly tuned them up/down with some filtering.

That should really be recorded in stereo and at least 20 samples for each key, possibly at different strength and then some sort of algo that would pick samples depending on how vigorously someone types.

Then that still wouldn't capture the intermodulation etc.

It's a lot of work to actually make it sound remotely realistic.

+1 on all these, and don't forget that the keys make a sound too while they travel back to their resting position.

Different hammers on an old typewriter made different sounds likely due to differences in mass and the angle of approach.

But since audio provides a potential vector for side channel attacks, randomization is better.

And also because human typists don't always strike each key with the same force.

Maybe the sound should be played in proportionate intervals to typing speed, rather than upon "hits", with the last one somehow cleverly ending with key-up and/or first key-down inevitably absent.

This is cool! Also, reminds me of selectic-mode for Emacs:

https://github.com/rbanffy/selectric-mode

If you're wondering, it doesn't work on Wayland.

I'm sad because I run rust on hyprland and love the idea.

Does anyone know why "it doesn't work on Wayland"?

https://github.com/Narsil/rdev#linux

Software noises don't really impress me when there are mechanical keyboards with solenoids that slam into the casing for every keystroke

Cool! Feature requests:

1. physical synthesis of typewriter sounds rather than using sound files.

2. Simulating key jams, so if you type too quickly further key presses are inhibited.

Sounds like you'd be interested in having a teletype machine, a system for triggering key presses on a physical typing interface using digital signals (not to be confused with a teletype machine, a system for triggering digital signals using key presses on a physical typing interface).

What I really want is a small editor that prohibits me from deleting things, as a typewriter dies. I switched to pen and paper for my drafts and it's all but ended my incessant self-editing that plagues my writing process. I'm sure a real typewriter would be more paper efficient.

Now I just stick with what's on the page and edit what I dislike later.

It would be handy for a digital version of that though.

It is not exactly what you're looking for but this might be a middle ground. It does let you delete things, but after a certain length, you can't do it anymore.

This is the web version of the app: https://write.sonnet.io/

Super clever idea, but ironically my biggest issue re: self-editing is often the first sentence of a draft haha

I made an Emacs mode that provides this functionality, only to find that someone else had done it better:

https://github.com/emacsmirror/draft-mode

(It was still worth it: huge fun and I learned a ton.)

You could just use the old 'ed' line editor which is already installed on any Unix-like system, including Linux and Mac OS. ed was written around 1970 to support printing terminals like teletypes.

It's easy: at the command line, type ed draft.txt (or whatever file name you want). Then on a line by itself, type the a command (for append). Then, just type your draft. When you are done typing, type a period . on a line by itself. Then type w to save the draft in the file. Then type q to exit ed. Your draft is in the file draft.txt. In the old days, you would then have a scroll of teletype paper with your draft on it, that you would tear off and take away to review. Nowadays, you can use another command to print the draft.

Later you can do ed draft.txt again and use other ed commands to make corrections/revisions if you like.

Or, even simpler, just use the cat command. At the command line, type cat > draft.txt. Then type your draft. When you are done, type ctrl-D. That's it. Your draft is now in the file draft.txt. You can use cat draft.txt (without the > ) to see what is in the file.

To append more text later, type cat >> draft.txt - be sure you type two >> , if you type just one > you will erase what you have written and start over.

might have to give that a shot!

In the old days of ICL and msdos … it was dreadful (imagine to edit your cobol or asm on that) … but you make it sounds like fun!

Another approach I've found useful for this - turn off your monitor, or turn your brightness down to 0.

You can often do this pretty easily, with keyboard shortcuts or hardware buttons, and it does a lot to limit your temptation to re-read your draft while you're still writing, and makes editing (temporarily) impossible.

Wait, let's enshitify it!

We could build an editor that allows you to type but more advanced editing features like deletion would require a subscription on in-editor virtual currency. We could sell loot packs with randomly selected editing features so encourage users to buy lots of loot packs to get exactly the editing features they needed.

We could make billions! Trillions!

write or die 2 w/ typewriter mode or momentum writer. both a bit old.

Ever seen “Maxheadroom: 20 minutes into the future?” So good! (I had no idea, I only knew him from Pepsi commercials). Anyway, in the film, the hackers use typewriter keyboards. It was a great touch.

Minute 20:15 https://youtu.be/vPFOkWWNWvk?si=WFBx4pCa4ZRY5hrQ

In the '80s, Wall Street traders used robotic fingers to type orders into mechanical keyboards because the exchanges mandated all orders must be submitted by keyboard. So they had rooms full of loud typing.

I remember being quite excited to get the little bit of software (they were called INITs, little code resources loaded at boot) that was floating around to add this typewriter “experience” to the original Macintosh. For whatever reason, it tickled me to no end. It also took a couple weeks to get it coordinating with the User Group meeting and what not.

To say the least, I was a bit giddy when I finally got it and got to make ticky ticky clakity clack typewriter sounds.

Two days later I took the machine in to get the 800k(!!) drive upgrade, which required a new set of ROMs.

And, that was that. The INIT didn’t work with the new ROMs.

An example of the boom/bust cycle of early computing.

Does it have the sound of Tippex being carefully brushed onto the paper when you hit the backspace or delete or CTRL-x ?

Then blowing sounds as you try to make it solid quicker?

Additional feature request: different typewriter sound profiles:

* Manual Typewriter * 1960s Electronic Typewriter * IBM Selectric * ASR 33 teletype

... For when your Model M isn't assertive enough.

It's a cool idea, but... my keyboard already sounds cool! Why would I want to mask the sound of those clicky switches? ;)

two projects somehow related: https://virtual.bbcmic.ro/?disc1=elite.ssd&autoboot

https://github.com/jarmitage/Stenophone

I once set up something similar in Karabiner. Had it on for all of 20 minutes before I got tired of it

I have a mechanical keboard I like its sound and I dont want to add anymore noise to that

I love these kind of project.

Greatly enjoying the musicbox effect. Thanks!

Just like the good old days.. hehehe!

So many prank ideas...

as we all know, loudest keyboard wins

Bravo, süper

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