Re: [Help] Re: Bug#310817: tipptrainer: Tipptrainer crashes when selecting a 2nd lesson after finishing the first.
Hello everybody.
> According to Andreas Neudecker tipptrainer might be better than others
> usability-wise but I have no idea with which competitors he compared nor
> if others share his opinion.
I did install several other typing tutors available in Debian. None of
them survived long on my hard disk (ecxept tipptrainer).
I liked tipptrainer especially because it doesn't have a
one-line-display for the text template you got to type from. It has two
panes that cover half the window (template above your typing). This is a
lot nicer to the eye than one single line (actually the program I used
long ago in Windows, German shareware "Schreibtrainer", has one line of
scrolling text (can be switched off). Other people might like the
one-line display better.
ktouch has an onscreen keyboard so you don't have to look at the real
one (this is supposed to be bad if you want to learn touch typing). I
didnt' like the looks. IIRC the template text line was quite small in
print. But I would have to look at it again.
I did take a look at some of the console programs too. I remember
starting gtypist. Default setting is for the program to start with
English UI and lessons, no matter what the locale settings say. Bad.
The UI is bad: several lines of template text, and you are supposed to
type in the lines between. Very crowded and eye-straining.
typespeed is not actually a touch typing trainer, rather a typing game.
You won't be able to learn touch typing correctly with this one. It is
nice, thoug. Words fall down (ncurses or such) and you have to type them
correctly to make them disappear. Sadly, this fails badly with accented
letters (as German umlauts (a, o, u with " on top).
tuxtype is a very nice typing game, not a touch typing tutor.
> I see no sense in supporting a three or
> more programs with the same functionality but want to make sure first
> that we do not remove one of the best before trying to help it out of
> its trouble.
I agree. Actually I would love to keep tipptrainer alive because it is
quite okay and promising. Sadly I am not a programmer, though I do have
some programming experience, but mainly in Python.
I might be able to do a short review on tipptrainer and, let's say
typespeed and gtypist if someone else would be willing to take on the
other programs.
By the way: I had a look at freshmeat's listed touch typing trainers.
There is actually not much more. And many of them are seemingly dead
projects, too. Looks like the FLOSS world has a lack here. Sad, because
fast typing can save people lots of time, can't it?
Kind regards
Andreas
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