1Questions asked by Brave GNU World 2---------------------------------- 3 4 * What is it? 5 6 GNU Typist is a typing tutor. You can learn correct typing with it 7 and improve your skills by practicing its exercises on a regular 8 basis. It uses lessons "scripts" and can be easily extended. 9 10 * Who would use it? 11 12 - Individuals who want to improve their typing skills. 13 14 - Educational institutions for their typing course exercises. 15 16 * Why would they use it instead of similar projects? 17 18 This is mainly thanks to the GNU General Public license under which 19 is it released. I won't discuss all the interests of Free Software, 20 but here are the major ones I see for this tool... 21 22 - For individuals: 23 24 o The program is freely available, and is already 25 installed in some GNU systems (such as Debian GNU / Linux) 26 27 o The program is been made by people using it, or according to the 28 needs expressed by users. 29 30 o They can participate in improving the tool quality, by reporting bugs 31 and even propose improvements to the source code. 32 33 - For educational institutions, in addition to the above reasons: 34 35 o They can rely on the availability of this software, as nobody 36 can restrict their freedom to use it for their educational 37 programs. 38 39 Freeware typing programs are available at the moment, but their 40 owners can discontinue their distribution or their support 41 without any notice. You can't base your educational programs on 42 such software. 43 44 More generally, with proprietary software, you have no way to 45 make sure that the software satisfies your needs. You depend 46 one somebody else's good will. 47 48 Using Free Software gives you freedom to modify the programs 49 according to your needs, or pay someone to do that. 50 51 o Teachers will be able to rely on the course library delivered 52 with the software. As the lesson file format is simple, they 53 can easily write their own lessons (possibly from exercises 54 they have already written) 55 56 This is a way of encouraging schools to share their teaching 57 materials and support education in developing countries, who 58 may neither have enough teachers nor funds to acquire 59 proprietary courses. 60 61 * (Programming) language used in this project? 62 63 - C language. Compliant with GNU coding standards. 64 65 * Special features/strengths? 66 67 - Available in several versions of Unix (including GNU/Linux) and 68 Windows. 69 70 - It's extensible... lessons for other keyboards and languages can 71 be easily added. 72 73 * Who is working on it? 74 75 o Tim Marston, development, project maintainer 76 o Felix Natter, development, German translation, tools 77 78 ...and lots of other contributors and previous project members who 79 are listed in the `ChangeLog' and `THANKS' files. 80 81 * History of the project? 82 83 - See the manual (http://www.gnu.org/software/gtypist/doc/) for the 84 complete history of this project. It started on VAX/VMS! 85 86 * Plans for the close and distant future? 87 88 - See the http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/gtypist.git/tree/TODO. 89 It is the most up-to-date version of the TODO file in the project 90 sources. 91 92 * Do you need help? If so: of what kind? 93 94 Yes, we need help! 95 96 - For supporting other languages in the interface. 97 98 - For coding and testing, or getting patches for today's code. 99 100 - For finding people (teachers, for example), who would write new 101 lessons. 102 103 - For finding old typing lessons in libraries, which copyrights 104 have expired (how long does it take for a copyright on a written 105 document to expire?). Once we have written lesson files in the 106 GNU Typist format from these old documents, I guess there is no 107 problem to copyleft these new files under the GPL. 108 109 * Interesting/fun stories that might juice up the story? 110 111 - Nothing yet. 112 113 * Website/FTP addresses? 114 115 - All the online resources are documented at 116 117 http://www.gnu.org/software/gtypist/ 118 119 * License?! 120 121 - The GNU General Public License, for the software and all the 122 files included in its source tarball. It is copyrighted directly 123 by the Free Software Foundation. 124 125 - All the contributions to be added to the source tarball 126 (typically lesson files) must thus be released with the same 127 license and copyright. 128 129 * Standard documents to read in this context? 130 131 - Nothing yet. 132 133 * Anything you would like to see mentioned? 134 135 - Nothing yet. 136 137 * Answer to a question I forgot? 138 139 - Who shall I send my comments to? 140 141 Your comments are all welcome! Please, send them to 142 bug-gtypist@gnu.org 143