GNU Typist
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Table of Contents
GNU Typist (also called gtypist) is a universal typing tutor.
You can learn correct typing and improve your skills by practicing
its exercises on a regular basis. Its main features are:
- It is free software released under the GNU
General Public License. In addition, it is an official program
of the GNU project.
- It comes with several typing tutorials: in Czech, English (Qwerty and Dvorak keyboard), Russian and Spanish,
as well as simpler exercices in German, French and Norwegian.
- It interprets a simple and intuitive scripting language that describes typing tutorials.
You can easily modify existing tutorials or create new ones according to your needs.
- It supports internationalization and already has an interface in Czech,
English, Finnish, French, German and Spanish.
- Users can navigate through lessons through an easy to use
arrow key based menu interface. 'vi' up, down, left and right keys can
be used too!
- Thanks to its execution in text mode with
the curses library, it can be compiled and used on several operating systems,
in particular on GNU/Linux and GNU/HURD, on several variants of Unix,
as well as on Windows/DOS with the DJGPP compiler and the PDCURSES library.
The aim of this Free Software project is to provide
valuable help to individuals and schools all over the
world in learning or teaching how to type.
Free software in education can not only be technically
or pedagogically superior to proprietary alternatives,
it can also promote the values of the GNU project
in schools:
- Freedom
- Cooperation and knowledge sharing
See the GNU and Education page for more details
about Free Software for Education.
As project maintainers, our main goal is to
protect users' freedom and encourage their cooperation, by
- Encouraging users and teachers to share their needs and bring contributions.
- Keeping the tool open and easily extensible. Our goal is to empower anyone,
in particular amongst typing teachers, to satisfy one's needs by improving lessons or
writing new ones, as well as by making the tool work in one's own language.
- Making the tool universal, attractive and easy to use, so that as many people as possible
benefit from contributed work and knowledge. This should also strengthen the user
community and attract new contributors.
Our current plans to improve GNU Typist are:
- To develop our tutorial database by looking for contributions for as many keyboard types
and languages as possible.
- To port the interface to GTK (and perhaps Gnome) to make
it easier to use and navigate between lessons.
- To indicate which finger is supposed to be used while typing.
The latest release of GNU Typist is version 2.7 released in September 2003.
The sources of this release are available at
ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/gtypist/
or at one of the mirrors.
The manual of GNU Typist is available on-line.
The source code for the manual is included in the distribution of the GNU Typist.
If you have questions about GNU Typist, you may contact us
by writing to bug-gtypist@gnu.org.
You can contribute to GNU Typist by sending bug reports, suggestions, patches and new lessons
to bug-gtypist@gnu.org.
You can also directly access the development versions of documentation and source files
in our CVS repository.
In particular, here are direct links to the latest versions of our
TODO
and
QUESTIONS (answers to Brave GNU World questions) files.
You may also subscribe to
the bug-gtypist@gnu.org mailing list.
You can contribute a new tutorial in 2 ways:
-
Simply type the tutorial, containing instructions and exercices, in a plain
text file (or in another open and standard format, such as HTML).
You may reuse some instructions available in existing tutorials, in the
lessons/
directory in the GNU Typist sources.
Send it to bug-gtypist@gnu.org.
Another contributor will take care of converting your tutorial to the
GNU Typist format.
- You can also directly write your tutorial in the GNU Typist format. It is a simple
scripting language which is described in the
online manual.
Once your lesson file is complete, you can test it by simply typing
(if you named it new.typ
):
gtypist new.typ
You can then send it to us as described above.
Instructions for writing interface messages in new languages will be available soon.
There are other free typing tutors, most of them released under the GNU General
Public License. They're worth trying too!
-
dvorak7min
is a simple ncurses-based typing tutor for those trying
to get fluent with the Dvorak keyboard layout.
-
DvorakNG
DvorakNG is a Dvorak typing tutor. It's heavily based on Dvorak7min,
but adds many improvements like a progress information database.
-
gcompris
is a set of educational games designed for small children,
including typing games.
-
Griffin
is an effort to write a free typing tutor for as many unices as possible
(BSD License).
-
gtyping is a GTK+/GNOME typing program.
It provides character typing on a GUI keyboard, a typing tutor that uses
a text file, and a simple typing game.
-
JRainWords
is a small java program useful for teaching small children about the keyboard.
-
jsTypingTutor
is a JavaScript program that attempts to help users and developers type faster
and more accurately. Many files are included for the user to practice on - but,
you may also use any text that can be copied and pasted into the main screen.
-
Jtypist
(now called Typist) is a cousin of GNU Typist written in Java. It has a graphical
user interface and display error statistics, showing the user what (s)he needs to improve.
It has been developped by Simon Baldwin, one of the original authors of the famous Typist program,
the ancestor of GNU Typist.
-
KTouch is another program for learning
to touch type. KTouch provides you with text to train on, and adjust
to different levels, depending on how good you are. It can display which key
to press next, and the correct finger to use.
-
Makin' Bakon
is a typing tutor game written in C++ with STL and Curses.
Save Pig from the supermaket shelves while learning to type
to a professional standard! It Uses the Fortune database
for some of it's exercises. Contains material that may offend!
-
Tipptrainer
is another graphical typing tutor. At the moment, it is
available in two languages (German and English) and for two keymaps
(PC-German and PC-English).
-
Tux Typing is a graphical,
educational typing tutorial game staring Tux, the GNU/Linux Penguin.
-
TypeFast
is a curses-based typing practice/tutoring program.
It has rudimentary weighting on letters for which you are
more prone to failure, and it features a mode where it will
only prompt for characters from either the left or right side
(conformant to generic Dvorak layouts, as well as QWERTY).
-
Typespeed
is a game to test your typing speed, and compare it with
your friends'.
-
Typing Trainer
is designed for exercising typing speed and typing accuracy,
by providing an environment to type in a copy of an original text
within a specific time period. It also has the ability to store
the results of such an exercise for exam purposes.
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Updated:
$Date: 2006/05/29 12:51:47 $ $Author: ramprasadb $