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Nowadays, being able to type well is a vital skill for just about everybody. If you use the internet, you need to be able to type (to a certain extent, at least) to do nearly anything — post on forums, participate in IRC chats, even just enter search terms for Google. Consequently, since you’re reading this website, you probably have acquired some typing skills already. But if you’re among those who wish to improve their current typing speed, or learn a different keyboard layout (like me), then Klavaro will prove quite useful.

Klavaro is a typing tutor program, based on the premise that having all kinds of bells and whistles and meters and on-screen keyboards make learning to type more difficult: and, therefore, is very simple, streamlined, and easy to use. Another great benefit is that it includes support for an enormous number of keyboard layouts, and you can easily add your own as well; so no matter where in the world you live, you can make use of Klavaro.

Installation is very easy, since both Debian and Red Hat (and, for that matter, Microsoft Windows) installation packages are provided. Even compiling from source is near-foolproof, since the only dependency is the GTK+ libraries.

Klavaro is also a multi-language application, so don’t be put off when you run it and find the default language is Portuguese. You’re supposed to be able to select your language from the drop-down list next to the word Idioma, and then click the button with the reload icon and the word Atualizar! to translate the program. For some reason this didn’t work for me; the list was blank, and no matter which of the blank entries I clicked on, it changed the language to Czech. However, this is easily remedied — merely edit the prefences.ini file found under .klavaro in your home folder, changing the language value to the abbreviation for the language of your choice (possible values can be found by looking at the names of the text files found in /usr/local/share/klavaro or /usr/share/klavaro). To make English the default language, change the appropriate line to language=C.

And now you’re ready to begin! First you’ll have to define which keyboard layout you’re using. The current selection is shown in the textbox at the top of the screen. To change it, click the button marked Define (if you’ve managed to change the language to English), and a configuration window will appear. Pick from the list of Original Layouts (I’m using dvorak_us), or, if you’ve got a really unusual keyboard that’s not shown in the list, click on the keys of the virtual keyboard shown at the right, and manually define the keys to match your hardware. Of course, if you want for some reason to learn a layout different from what’s printed on your keyboard, that’s quite possible, too. Klavaro doesn’t have any built-in layout transposer (selecting what keyboard layout to use merely changes what the lessons will be like), but you can change your keyboard’s layout using KDE or GNOME’s included keyboard software, or by using setxkbmap.

Once your keyboard is set, it’s time to type. You’ll notice five buttons in a column toward the bottom of the window. The top one of these, labeled Introduction, gives you a bit of information on how to correctly position your hands on the keyboard for touch-typing. Just to the right of it you’ll notice a checkbox. If this is checked, you’ll be taken back to this main menu the next time you start Klavaro. If not, however, Klavaro will automatically take you to whichever type of lesson has its radio-button on.

The four lower buttons take you to the actual lessons. There are four types of training involved, which, respectively, heighten your knowledge of the key layout, your adaptability, velocity, and fluidness while typing.

The first button will take you to the basic course, which consists of 2-4 minute lessons in which you merely repeat the same couple keys in various combinations, until you are thoroughly bored. Dull as this may seem, it is a good way to memorize the positions of the various letters, fairly quickly. Once a lesson is completed, you’ll be given the time it took you to type out the lesson, and your accuracy rate. If you’ve got over 95% of the letters correct, you’ll then go on to the next lesson, or else be instructed to do the lesson again.

Of course, if you don’t enjoy that idea, you can always skip to whichever lesson you like, using the spinbox in the upper left of the window. Klavaro will remember what lesson you were on last, the next time you start it up, but if for some reason you wish to begin again at the beginning, you can click the Reset! button, found next to the spinbox at the top of the screen. Next to that is a Progress button, which will show you a graph of your accuracy or velocity for the current lesson, and how much progress you’ve made each time you’ve typed it. Then comes the Keyboard button, which will show you the virtual keyboard, and tell you which finger to use for each key, when you click it. If you select the Keep Hands checkbox, a small window showing a pair of hands will remain visible while you continue the lesson, and highlight the finger required to press the next key, as you type. Then, still moving along the toolbar in a leftward direction, comes a button for displaying the lesson type’s introductory message, a button to take you back to the main menu, and beneath them, a checkbox for determining whether to beep the internal speaker whenever you make a mistake, and a small button which brings up a dialog to change the display font, to add some variety to your typing lessons.

Once you’re relatively familiar with where to put each finger to type all the letters, it’s time to work on your adaptability by typing random letters. Klavaro arranges these into wordlike formations that are actually pronounceable, most of the time, so that while you’ll be going through the motions of typing an email or an article, you won’t be distracted by what the words mean, and instead focus on further memorizing the letter placement. Probably.

Next in line are lessons to test your typing velocity. These are quite similar to those for adaptability, only here you’ll be typing real words. The words will be arranged rather like sentences, with punctuation, but since the words are picked randomly from the included dictionary, there’s still no actual meaning to what you’re typing; though you will, now, be typing the actual letter patterns of your language. And if you get tired of the selection of words Klavaro gives you, you can have the test instead choose words from any text file stored on your computer, or from the clipboard, by clicking the Other button in the upper-left corner.

And then, finally, come the fluidness tests. Here you actually type complete paragraphs, on the subjects of Esperanto, world hunger, and the importance of letter writing — while focusing on typing smoothly. You can adjust the number of paragraphs in a lesson; and once you’ve exhausted the possibilities of the above subjects, you can give Klavaro your own bodies of text, the same way you do in the velocity lessons. The fluidness tests take the form of a sort of contest, since Klavaro keeps track of the top ten typing scores (a combination of velocity, accuracy, and fluidness) on your computer. And, if you’ve got ftp-upload installed, you can send your scores to the Klavaro website (or, for that matter, any other site that feels like comparing people’s typing scores), and then see who the top ten typists are, by clicking the Top 10 button on the toolbar.

And that’s about all there is to it! While Klavaro does not have as polished an interface nor as expertly-designed lessons as other typing tutors, such as the famous Mavis Beacon, it does have one major advantage over many commercial programs — the ability to support just about any language or keyboard layout the people of earth can come up with. And that’s saying a lot!

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 3rd, 2008 at 10:57 pm and is filed under Education. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.