1Questions asked by Brave GNU World
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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