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On a manual typewriter, only one (striking) key may be pressed at a time, otherwise at best the second key's hammer gets blocked by the first, and at worst the hammers may get tangled together and require picking apart. Why are some of my keypresses being ignored? / Why can't I type at my usual speed? Thanks to all the beta testers for their great suggestions and feedback. Since then it's all got a bit out of hand as I strive to make the program's output "worse" by trying to faithfully re-create some of the other interesting eccentricities of typewriters that have been eliminated in the computer age, such as wobbly and unevenly-inked characters. This seemed like it would be an interesting challenge. One day my youngest son suggested I should write one that works the right way and allows overtyping. On a real typewriter, backspace simply moves the carriage back one space, allowing you to overtype a previously typed character.
#Typewriter keyboard mac simulator#
It started because I was trying to tell my kids about how typewriters worked (because of course they'd never seen one), so I looked for a typewriter simulator on the web, but all the existing ones that I could find get one very basic thing wrong - when you press backspace, they erase the character you just typed, like a computer.
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The only reason I haven't implemented it is the problem of designing a UI to represent unjamming it by picking the mechanism apart, and how to make your fingers inky and oily when you do it. Amazingly, this is the most commonly requested feature from the beta testers of this program. If you type too fast or try to type two keys at once, the mechanism should sometimes jam, rather than just ignoring the latter keypress.This is just a first draft of the feature. In general it should probably be more "all or nothing" - patchy at low ink levels rather than faded. The correction paper needs some tweaks to make it more realistic - eg if you reuse a bit that you've already used, it should be less effective in the shape of the previous character typed there.Once you have pressed a key in conjunction with shift, the program remembers the correct shift character for that key and will use it when shift lock is on. If shift lock is on, and you press a non-alphabetic character key that you have not yet pressed in conjunction with shift, the program has no way of knowing what the shifted character should be for your particular keyboard, so it will default to using the shift characters from my UK Apple keyboard.I may attempt it at some point, if anyone really wants it. I think for mobile use it will need to be a full-blown app with its own input handler, rather than a web app. I've tried making my own virtual keyboard instead (a bunch of s with handlers attached to touch events) which kinda works but is rather sluggish, and there are issues with the sounds.
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If I use the device's own on-screen keyboard there are issues with forcing it to appear without a visible input field, keeping it there, working around it etc. As it stands, this site is unlikely ever to work on a touchscreen device without a real keyboard, due to the problems of dealing with an on-screen keyboard.Ready? Just start typing, or click here if you prefer: START!.Make a dollar sign by overtyping a capital S with a | (vertical bar/pipe).Use the correction paper to erase your mistakes (see "Correction Paper" below).and/or can be locked down by holding one or both and pressing (effectively "shift lock").Hold down for "colour shift", which gives you red text.Use and to jump forward or back to the nearest tab stop.The up and down cursors move the roller by a quarter-line. You can use the cursor keys to move around.As well as just typing normal text, you might like try these:.Most people naturally overlap keypresses when typing on a computer keyboard - you may need to change your typing style to avoid skipping characters when typing at speed (see FAQ for more info).
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You must release each key before pressing the next. Just like a real manual typewriter, you can only press one character key at a time.Make sure you have your sound turned on for the fully-immersive experience!.Mobile touchscreen devices won't work (see Known Bugs below). You need to be on a computer with a keyboard.
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