Here's another screenshot of KTouch in action, this time with a german keyboard and training lecture:
Even though learning touch typing with KTouch and using the program should be very simple we will look a bit closer@KTouch in the following sections.
When you start KTouch you can see the screen shown above. The main program window shows three main sections:
We look@these sections later again.
Ok, the first time you start KTouch it will open a default lecture and select a default keyboard layout. Before you start typing you should adjust the keyboard layout so that it matches yours. Go to -> and select the country you're in (or some country which uses the same keyboard layout as you). If your keyboard is not included, you can always define your own keyboard (see Creating your own keyboard).
Once you have your keyboard selected, choose your training lecture. The first line in your corrent lecture and level is shown in the teacher's line. You can select any of the default lectures via -> or open a user defined lecture file (e.g. if your teacher gives you a special lecture to practice on) with ->. You may even create your own lecture (see Creating your own lecture). When you have selected keyboard and lecture you can start typing.
Place your hand on the keyboard as indicated by the 8 marked finger keys (thumbs over the space bar) and start typing the text shown in the teacher's line. Each key you need to press is highlighted on the keyboard and if you need to move a finger from its resting position the target key and the appropriate finger key is highlighted. Try to move your hands as little as possible and after you typed a character always try to return your fingers to their resting positions.
The key colors indicate which finger needs to press which key.
While you type you may make mistakes and hit the wrong key. In that case the student's line will change its color (per default to red) and you have to hit Backspace to erase the wrong character (or characters) again.
When you have successfully completed a line of text you need to press the Enter key to advance to the next line.
As already mentioned above you need to select a training lecture which contains all the text you want to practice. Usually the difficulty of the text is gradually increasing and so most lectures contain various difficulty levels. However, some lectures may just contain a single level and text (e.g. a newspaper article to test your skills).
In the info boxes@top of the KTouch main window you see the current level@the left. The small buttons to the right allow you to manually switch levels. Normally this happens automatically (more about this in the section Training Options). The right info box shows a brief information text about the level. Usually it gives you a list of characters that are new in this level. The middle two info boxes show your current typing speed (in characters per minute) and your correctness. These values are Level Statistics and whenever you start a new level these values are resetted. However, the program still remembers your previous statistics (see section Statistics in KTouch).
While you type the text of a training lecture you are in a practice session. You can start a new practice session using -> or the appropriate button in the toolbar. Level changes (automatic or manual) do not change your training session. You stay in this training session until you start a new training session, select a new lecture (which automatically starts a new training session) or quit the program.
If you open any dialog in KTouch while you are in a training session the training is paused and the timer is stopped until you hit the next key. You can manually pause the session using -> or the appropriate button in the toolbar.
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