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TTYPE.TXT
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1990-10-31
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8KB
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234 lines
TOUCHTYPE TUTOR
DEC Rainbow 100 Version
Revised Oct. 29, 1990
Concept By: Tim Pearce 7 Bannerman St,
Cremorne, N.S.W.
Reworked By: R. Berthet 15/5 Cottonwood Cr.
North Ryde, 2113.
SYDNEY.
(61-2)-88-1640
Customized for DEC Rainbow 100 and made code
more portable by: Harvey G. Lord
P.O. Box 183
Storrs, CT 06268
Completely reworked into Carl Neiburger
TurboPascal version for 169 N. 25th St.
DEC Rainbow by: San Jose, Calif. 95116
These instructions are rewritten by Carl Neiburger from an earlier
draft by Richard Berthet. They remain public domain.
INTRODUCTION
TTYPE (TOUCHTYPE TUTOR) is what it says it is: a typing tutor.
The original was written in BASIC. It has been reworked into Turbo Pascal
so that DEC Rainbow owners who do not have BASIC can run it and to add
some speed and improvements available from a modern compiler.
Some of the features are:
* Five HELP files, which you can edit and expand.
* Onscreen representation of a 'QWERTY' keyboard, which displays
the keys to be type and those actually typed.
* Graduated exercises with prompts (or comments) throughout.
When you unpack TTYPE, you should have these files:
TTYPE.TXT These instructions
TTYPE.EXE The program
TTYPE.PAS The source code
TTHELP0.DAT |
.. to .. | The help files -- All must be on default drive
TTHELP4.DAT |
TTYPEXA.DAT | EXERCISE Data files -- All that you wish
.. to .. | to use must be on default drive.
TTYPEXJ.DAT | You can create more.
WARNING.RSI | Important information about a health-hazard
| linked to touch typing.
All you need to run TTYPE is to put TTYPE.EXE in your default
directory or a directory reachable with your current path, and
put all of the *.DAT files in your current directory.
Then start the program by entering TTYPE. There are no command tails.
The HELP files include all you need to know to run the program, and
they are displayed automatically.
Before you start TTYPE, though PLEASE READ WARNING.RSI for information
on good typing habits that can spare you serious harm.
TO AUGMENT THE EXERCISES AND MODIFY THE HELP FILES
==================================================
Both the exercises and the help files are designed to be created and
modified easily using any text editor capable of saving text in
ASCII form.
EXERCISE FILES
==============
These files are named TTYPEX? .DAT, where ? must be a letter between
"A" and "Z". TTYPE does a directory search for all such files in the
default path.
-- Comments are groups of FIVE lines, each beginning with !#.
Note that comments MUST be in groups of five consecutive lines.
If you don't need that many lines, leave some blank.
-- Lines beginning with |n, where n is a single digit number, are
repeated n times.
-- A paragraph is a group of lines that is to be repeated in order.
In other words, instead of repeating a single line n times,
you repeat the sequence n times.
The first line of a paragraph defines its length and the number
of repeats. It consists only of |pn,ll, where "|p" or "|P" are
literal characters, n is a single-digit number of repeats, and
ll is a double-digit number of up to 20 lines.
This introducer is followed by ll lines, all of which are typed
exactly as they should appear.
-- All other lines are treated as normal exercise lines, to be typed
once.
-- No exercise line may be longer than 80 characters, including the
| or !# introductory codes.
EXAMPLE OF AN EXERCISE FILE
!#Exercise A.
!#
!# Left hand on the [A] [S] [D] [F] keys.
!#
!# Right hand on the [J] [K] [L] [;] keys.
|3fff fff jjj jjj fff jjj ff jj ff jj f j
|3ddd ddd kkk kkk ddd kkk dd kk dd kk d k
!#
!#
!# RETURN the carriage without looking up.
!#
!#
|3sss sss lll lll sss lll ss ll ss ll s l
|3aaa aaa ;;; ;;; aaa ;;; aa ;; aa ;; a ;
|2aaa ddd add add aaa lll all all add all
|3aaa sss kkk ask jjj aaa lll jal ask jal
|3ddd aaa aaa dad lll aaa ddd lad dad lad
|3a as ask asks asks; f fa fal fall falls
|3a al ala alas alas; f fl fla flas flask
|3a ad add adds adds; s sa sal sala salad
!#
!#
!# GOAL: Finish next two lines in one minute.
!#
!#
|2a sad fad; a lass falls; dad asks a lad;
HELP FILES
==========
The current version of TTYPE has only five help files, numbered
TTHELP0 .DAT through TTHELP4 .DAT. The text of each may be
modified.
One special character, #, on a single line, creates a page break.
You should include a message like "Hit RETURN for more HELP." on
the line preceding it.
At the end of each HELP file, the user must be prompted for an
appropriate response. The response characters are identical to
those in the menus within the program, so the HELP files act as
expanded menus. In other words, typing "Y" at the end of a help
file has the same effect as typing "Y" in the menu that called it.
Here is TTHELP4.DAT:
You have these options:
C - Reset score counters and remain in "escape mode."
N - Start a new exercise.
R - Repeat the current line or paragraph once more. (Note: The lesson
plan may already call for several repeats. Pressing R will increase
that number.
S - Skip up to nine lines -- you will be asked how many. Any response
other than "1" to "9" will be interpreted as zero. When you choose
this option, you will remain in "escape mode."
Q - Quit TYPING TUTOR and return to the MS-DOS prompt.
<RETURN> - To continue exercise where you left off.
HIT any of these keys.
---------------------
THE SOURCE CODE:
===============
Richard Berthet made these comments about part of the earlier BASIC
version of the source code:
My first reaction upon reading this code was unprintable; it
still is. I haven't done much to it, apart from annotations,
because the flow is so tortuous that any changes cause it to
bomb. Anyway, it works, even if it is messy !
Because I don't have a BASIC compiler around -- and wouldn't want one
-- I did something about the mess by rewriting the whole thing in
Turbo Pascal. This wasn't as hard as it may seem, because eliminating
the spaghetti code and leaving out procedures that are part of standard
libraries shortened the code from 748 to about 550 lines, including a
picture and map of the keyboard (originally, in a cruder form, was in
a data file), and a few extra lines of introduction.
I didn't do a very thorough job of polishing code, and improvements
are undoubtedly possible.
Although the code is now Rainbow-specific, it should be fairly easy to
port to any other machine. All that needs to be done is this:
-- Change the outline characters the keyboard from VT100 characters
to whatever works on your machine and reassign any keys that
need to be moved. You must also revise CharIndexType to
include the right character addresses (one character to the
left of each letter, because the spaces to either side of it
are also highlighted), and ShowKey to modify the addresses
of the space bar and Return key.
-- Substitute versions of ShowLine, SetAttribute, GotoXY, ClrScr
and EraseLine that work on your machine. For IBM PCs,
Brian Foley's FastWr.PAS offers the equivalent of ShowLine
and SetAttribute. Turbo Pascal has GotoXY and ClrScr in its
CRT unit. EraseLine is trickier. Here is a routine that
will work using procedures in the CRT unit:
PROCEDURE EraseLine;
VAR x, y: CARDINAL;
BEGIN
x := WhereX;
y := WhereY;
GotoXY(1, y);
ClrEOL;
GotoXY(x, y);
END;