PingoS Tipptrainer - a typing trainer

PingoS-Tipptrainer is a training program for users, which are interested in learning the touch typing system. The concept was adapted to the usage of a typical PC keyboard. Tipptrainer is localized in means of keyboard layout and dialog language. Currently, German and English are supported. German is better supported due to the native language of the authors.

The main goal is to make touch typing lessons in schools easier and OS independant. That's why wxWindows was chosen as base library.

There are three available modes: single lesson, a whole course or contest mode. The latter also supports lessons from remote sources like FTP or HTTP for easier distribution.

There are no command line options. All Options are settable either directly in the configuration files (see FILES section below) or in dialogs. Forced settings are implemented by mechanism provided with the wxWindows library. They can be applied by prefixing entries with ! in the global configuration file. For a complete list of Options, take a look at src/ConfigFile.H in the tipptrainer sources.

Localization (choosing keyboard layout and dialog language) is done using your current locale (see output of "locale"). You can force a language in the option dialogs but you MUST have a proper locale installed to use a dialog language different than English.

If you want to exchange the default lesson files, you MUST encode them in UTF-8 text encoding. Take a look at the iconv tool to do this or use a good editor in an UTF-8 locale.

The touch typing system was developed for effective writing on typewriters. It is based on logical and physical conditions of your fingers. So the little fingers and the index fingers have a greater range than the ringfinger or the middle finger. The thumbs have to control the <space>-key. For effectivly doing that you should use the thumb of the right hand when there follows a key for a finger of the left hand, and the left thumb when the next key is for a finger of the right hand. The keys sorted by fingers:

left hand - index finger:

5 6

r t

f g

v b

right hand - index finger:

7 8

y u

h j

n m

left hand - middelfinger:

4

e

d

c

right hand - middelfinger:

9

i

k

,

left hand - ringfinger:

3

w

s

x

right hand - ringfinger:

0

o

l

.

left hand - little finger:

` 1 2

<TAB> q

<CAPS> a

<SHIFT> z

<CTRL>

right hand - little finger:

- = \ <BACKSP>

p { }

; ' <ENTER>

/ <SHIFT>

<CTRL>

The original finger used for the Alt was originally the ring finger. However, with current keyboard layouts with windows keys, this may not be appropriate any more. When the <SHIFT>-key is pressed you will get the second character of each key, i.e. the capital letters.

The touch count counts key combinations that result is a visible character. This is an old definition from the times of mechanical typing mashines. Thus, <SHIFT>+a is counted as one, not two.

/etc/tipptrainer.conf

global configuration file

~/.Tipptrainer

user configuration file

See provided BUGS file for known bugs.

locale(1), iconv(1)

This program was developed by the PingS Software team. See the about dialog for details.