GNU Typist

Table of Contents

• Introduction to GNU Typist
• Project goals
• Downloading GNU Typist
• Documentation of GNU Typist
• Support
• Helping GNU Typist
• How to contribute new lessons
• Other free typing tutors

Introduction to GNU Typist

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.

Project goals

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

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.

• 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.

Downloading GNU Typist

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.

Documentation of GNU Typist

The manual of GNU Typist is available on-line.

The source code for the manual is included in the distribution of the GNU Typist.

Support

If you have questions about GNU Typist, you may contact us by writing to bug-gtypist@gnu.org.

Helping GNU Typist

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.

How to contribute new lessons

You can contribute a new tutorial in 2 ways:

1. 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.
2. 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.

Other free typing tutors

• 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 $