rangerhq-reader/CHANGELOG.md

Changelog

All notable changes to Ranger Reader are documented here. Format: Keep a Changelog 1.1.0 — versioning: SemVer.

---

[Unreleased]

---

[1.1.2] — 2026-05-27

Fixed — High WPM in Sentence / Paragraph modes was clamped by a too-conservative minimum-display floor

After v1.1.1 raised the WPM cap to 3000 in Sentence and Paragraph modes, David noticed that pushing the slider from 1500 to 3000 didn't actually speed up reading — the chunks were still sitting on screen for the same amount of time.

Root cause: the v1.1.0 minimum-display floor was 1500 ms per chunk (set conservatively to prevent flash-frame illegibility). At 3000 WPM, any sentence under ~60 words mathematically wants to display for under 1500 ms — but the floor clamped them all to 1500 ms, so the calculated speed-up never reached the user.

Lowered floors:

• Sentence mode: 1500 ms → 400 ms (eye can absorb a short sentence in well under half a second once it's on screen)
• Paragraph mode: 1500 ms → 800 ms (paragraphs are denser; need slightly more time even at high WPM)

Maximum cap stays at 12 s for very long paragraphs at very low WPM.

At 3000 WPM with the new floors, a 20-word sentence displays for 500 ms (was 1500 ms — 3× faster) and a 60-word paragraph displays for 1750 ms (was 1500 ms — uncapped formula now visible).

This makes the WPM slider actually behave the way users expect: higher WPM = faster reading, all the way up to 3000.

Clarification

The reader does NOT iterate word-by-word inside a chunk in Sentence or Paragraph modes. The whole sentence or paragraph is rendered in one DOM update; only the auto-advance interval is calculated from word count. The word count is used as a proxy for "how long does a reader need to absorb this chunk," not as a per-word display loop.

---

[1.1.1] — 2026-05-27

Changed — Mode-aware WPM ceiling

The WPM slider's maximum value now adapts to the active reading mode:

• Word mode: 1500 WPM ceiling (human single-word recognition limit — beyond ~25 ms per word the brain stops registering individual words)
• Sentence and Paragraph modes: 3000 WPM ceiling. In chunk modes the "WPM" controls auto-advance timing across larger display units, so higher values still produce comprehensible reading speeds (a 20-word sentence at 3000 WPM still gets ~400 ms of display time, which is well within visual-recognition comfort)

Switching from a high-WPM chunk mode back to Word mode automatically clamps the current value down to 1500, preventing accidentally-illegible word-mode playback.

The + keyboard shortcut now respects the mode-specific ceiling.

Why this matters

For skim-pass reading on long thesis papers, the previous 1500 WPM cap in Sentence mode was too conservative. With a 20-word sentence at 1500 WPM the display held each sentence for ~1 s — comfortable but slower than necessary for already-known territory. 3000 WPM cuts that to ~400 ms, suitable for the Preview / Postview phases of structured reading (preview chapters, scan for known concepts, identify sections that warrant a slower second-pass read).

---

[1.1.0] — 2026-05-27

Added — Sentence and Paragraph reading modes

The single-word RSVP display from v1.0 is now one of three modes selectable via the toggle in the header (or keyboard 1 / 2 / 3):

• Word (1) — original RSVP, one word at a time with ORP focal-character coloring
• Sentence (2) — one full sentence at a time, auto-advancing on (words / WPM) × 1.25 interval, clamped to 1.5–12 s per chunk
• Paragraph (3) — one paragraph at a time, larger reading area, (words / WPM) × 1.40 interval

The sentence splitter handles common academic-text false positives — titles (Mr., Dr., Prof.), Latin (e.g., i.e., et al.), abbreviations (Vol., Fig., Eq., Ref.), and decimal numbers — by guarding them before splitting on .!? followed by whitespace and capital letter.

Paragraph splitting is on blank-line separation (the conventional output of pdftotext).

Other v1.1 polish:

• Stage centre guide-lines hidden in Sentence / Paragraph modes (single-word framing isn't needed)
• Skip-distance adapts per mode: ± 10 in Word mode, ± 1 in chunk modes
• Meta text adapts to mode: N / total words / sentences / paragraphs
• Time-remaining always computed in raw words regardless of mode (so 500 WPM means 500 WPM everywhere)
• Mode is persisted alongside text + WPM + position in localStorage
• v1.1 version stamp visible in header

---

[1.0.0] — 2026-05-27

Initial release.

Added

• Single-word RSVP display with WPM slider (200–1500, default 500)
• ORP (Optimal Recognition Point) focal-character coloring in red
• Punctuation-aware pause: 2.5× for period/exclamation/question, 1.7× for comma/semicolon/colon, 1.3× for closing brackets
• Progress bar + meta (N / total words · ~X min remaining at Y WPM)
• Keyboard shortcuts (Space, ←/→, +/−, R)
• Drag-and-drop .txt file loading anywhere on the page
• localStorage persistence — text, WPM and position survive page reloads
• Dark-mode WP-tone palette (accessible-contrast colour scheme)
• "Done" state turns the display green when the paper finishes

Single self-contained HTML file. No dependencies, no install, no network calls. Runs in any modern browser, fully offline.