KTouch
KDE
Sourceforge

 Description

Screenshot KTouch is a program for learning how to touch-type.

KTouch is FREE and offers you an easy way to learn to type quickly and correctly on a keyboard. Every finger has its place on the keyboard with associated keys to press. Starting with only a few keys to remember you will advance through different training levels while additional keys are introduced. As a result you will be able to type quickly and accurately. This is because you no longer need to search for the keys on the keyboard and because you will definitely be using more than just two fingers.

KTouch indicates the keys you need to press and the finger you need to use for that key on the screen. You don't have to look down on the keyboard to search for the key. You will therefore get used to looking at the screen only and hence learn touch typing much faster.

 Features

Here's a list of the main features of KTouch:

  • KTouch supports various keyboard layouts and you can easily add own keyboard layouts
  • A number of training lectures are included by default (english, german, french ... etc)
  • You can add and modify training lectures using the built-in lecture editor
  • Detailed training statistics help you to find possible typing problems (keys that you typed wrong very often)
  • The program calculates typing speed and your accuracy on-the-fly and displays them while you type
  • Many settings (including the colour scheme of the program) can be modified by the user
  • During training the level can be adjusted automatically according to your typing skill: if you type fast and correctly you will move a level up, otherwise stay in the level or even move down. So you will learn touch typing like playing a game.

 License

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

 News

Check out the ChangeLog for the most recent changes.

What happened When
Progress, KDE 4 (Håvard)

There has been progress on getting KTouch up and running on KDE 4. There are still problems and bugs floating around, most of which is due to bitrot and code being commented out to compile.

One good improvement it that the dead key bug has been fixed. So you should be able to train on all sorts of different characters such as ẽ á.

People are also sending in more keyboards and training files which are great. If your keyboard contains errors or your training file is silly. Please try to correct it and send me the diff or file.

25-Februar-2007
KTouch Version 1.6 released (Andreas)

KTouch version 1.6 is now available for download. Since KDE 3.5 is in a feature freeze, this release is only available on SourceForge right now. If we get permission to add features to the KDE 3.5.4 bug fix release, the new features and fixes will be added there as well.

New in this version is the ability to use KTouch in 'family' mode. If you have only one user account for several users, you can now create 'users' under KTouch and store statistics data for each user. This is mainly useful for families and class rooms with a common login.

I won't have much time to work on KTouch (meaning adding new features) until summer, but I will monitor the bug reports and try to fix bugs that show up in the new release. Also, if time permits, I'll try to update the manual so that the recent feature additions will be documented.

17-April-2006
KTouch Version 1.5.3 released (Andreas)

KTouch version 1.5.3 is now available for download and is also in KDE SVN, so that it will be part of the upcoming KDE 3.5.3 release.

While this was initially intended to be just a small bugfix release it ended up containing major feature improvements and quite a few bug fixes. With this release the bug count on bugs.kde.org went down from 40 to 17. (Now I have time to start playing around with the keyboard drawing engine a bit more).

10-April-2006
New bug fix/additional keyboard + training file release (Andreas)

I've updated the source code in KDE SVN, including some bug fixes and new training and keyboard files. You can download the most recent release as source package from the download page.

27-March-2006
New keyboard design/support ideas (Andreas)

Over the past months I have received many contributions for keyboard files and lecture and quite a few requests to support also quite exotic keyboard styles. While I'm still not done with rewriting the keyboard system to XML I figured maybe a short survey would help to identify the requirements on the keyboard engine. I've extended the keyboard layout part in the development section that contains information about the proposed features of the new keyboard functionality.
Please send me your ideas and thoughts about the improvements suggested on the webpage.

02-December-2005
KTouch Version 1.5 released (Andreas)

KTouch version 1.5 is available for download (regarding the last log entry... "later today" turned out to be slightly longer then expected). The archive available in the download section contains a full source code copy of KTouch and the required libkdeedu. Installation instructions are the same as always.

24-July-2005
KTouch Version 1.5 prepared for next release (Andreas)

KTouch version 1.5, as it is now in KDE subversion contains some minor bug fixes and also the statistics dialog (which was actually only planned for the 1.6 release), since it was requested a lot. The version is now being prepared for the next KDE 3.5 release (currently I update the documentation, check all keyboard and lecture files and incorporate new lectures and keyboard layouts that I got from KTouch users).

For all who are using KDE 3.4 and need the statistics for next autumn (begin of school) and don't want to use the KDEEDU subversion package I'll add a stand-alone archive with the KTouch source code later today. Also the download/installation instructions on the webpage will be updated shortly.

19-June-2005
KTouch Version 1.6 - Statistics back in (Andreas)

KTouch (version 1.5, as it is in KDE CVS) contains some minor bug fixes. The most work is now done in version 1.6 (which will be soon back in CVS/Subversion). Right now the new statistics collection engine is complete and in a few days a new snapshot will be available in the download section. Work is also progressing in the XML keyboard conversion.

01-Mai-2005
KTouch Version 1.4 as part of KDE 3.4 (Andreas)

The current version of KTouch includes some minor updates. One of the most frequently reported bug was related to lecture and keyboard files. So the lecture files have been converted to XML and lecture specific fonts for the students/teachers line can be specified.

Most other features couldn't be implemented in time for the KDE 3.4 release and will be part of the next release. I was very busy with work lately so I couldn't finish the long overdue XML/Unicode conversion of the keyboards. Similarly the statistics revision couldn't be fixed in time - it was broken and since I didn't have time to fix it in time, it is disabled in the current version (unfortunately).

21-November-2004
Work has started on a new version of KTouch (Andreas)

I have started with a revision of KTouch. In the last months I got a lot of mails regarding missing features (fortunately few bug reports) and the popularity of the program is amazing. So I guess it is about time to include the most frequent wish - a typing test to evaluate the typing skill of the user.

I have prepared a program concept of the new KTouch version, which I will extend over the next weeks and implement. If you want you can look at the concept (NOTE: no longer up-to-date) and mail me (Andreas) any suggestions or wishes you might have.

With the introduction of the new KDE libs (KDE 3.2) our last version of KTouch in KDEEDU doesn't seem to work anylonger, I will fix that as soon as possible. Until then you may download a snapshot of the 1.3 version in the download section. It compiles nicely on my KDE 3.2.1 and QT 3.2 setup.

02-April-2004
The project website has been updated (rewritten). 22-May-2003
KTouch 1.3 is out (Andreas)

New features:

  • Statistics dialog added
  • Display of graphical charts for typing performance
10-May-2003
KTouch 1.2 is out.

New features:

  • Color schemes for keyboard
  • Symbols for special keys are printed
  • Automatic level change re-implemented
  • Lecture editor added
  • Quick select menues for keyboard layouts and default lectures added
18-April-2003
The programming interface of KTouch was completely rewritten. KTouch 1.1 is out.

New features:

  • KDE 3 style preferences dialog (with all settings)
  • New scrolling algorithm (cursor is correctly placed now)
10-April-2003
Andreas Nicolai joined the project. 30-March-2003
KTouch is now in the KDEEDU package

Please see www.kde.org on howto download and install the KDEEDU package. For other applications in this package see edu.kde.org

19-June-2002
KTouch 1.0 is out.

KTouch is now in the main kde-cvs under kdenonbeta.

New feature :

  • Keypad training
  • Manual change of level as well as automatic
  • Visual notification miss typing.
26-May-2001
KTouch 0.91 is out.

Christian SPENER joins KTouch ;-) & we have put KTouch into cvs at Sourceforge.

New features:
  • Pause button
  • Added frensh keyboard
05-April-2001
KTouch 0.9 is out.

New features:

  • KDE 2
  • Colorfull keyboard
  • Scrolling text if text doesn't fit into window
17-March-2001
KTouch 0.7 is out.

New features:

  • You have to press enter at the end of each line
  • KTouch can now remember where you were last time you were practising
  • You can adjust how the levels change according to your typing skills
  • Latin-American and Portuguese keyboards added
11-Aug-2000
KTouch 0.6 is out.

New feature:
Change between different keyboard layouts. Supported keyboard's is English, German and Norwegian. If you want to make a keyboard for your language please let me know.

11-Jun-2000
KTouch 0.5 is out.

New feature:
Higlighting of the control keys. e.g uppercase letters will be indicated with the shift button.

Bug fix:
You can now use ASCII characters in the extended table. Thanks to: Peter Rexigel

09-May-2000
KTouch 0.3 is out.

New feature:
- It is now possible to load your own text-files for training. Use a blank line for new levels, and # for commenting.

26-April-2000
KTouch 0.1 is out. 19-April-2000
Web-site online 19. Apr 2000
KTouch project started. 15-March-2000
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