[Localization] content for typing turtle

[Wade Brainerd]

Thanks for the reply!

On Mon, Nov 24, 2008 at 11:54 PM, Edward Cherlin <echerlin at gmail.com> wrote:
> Are you including non-Latin alphabets and other writing systems? Will
> you include the Dvorak layout for English? At one time I could
> touch-type in eight writing systems, so I might be able to give you
> some assistance.

The latest version of the software queries the active keymap for
layout information, and is fully Unicode enabled.  So, if you have
your keyboard set to Dvorak, it will teach you Dvorak.  I have tested
it with English, Spanish and Russian layouts.

I'm basically looking for someone to research the best approach to
teaching keys - e.g. which keys, which order, how much repetition per
key, what are reasonable speed and accuracy goals for children (for
awarding medals), etc.

>> We need to develop lesson material which teaches children how to type
>> correctly, and does so in an engaging and entertaining way.  This
>> includes more than just teaching which finger presses which key.  For
>> example, taking breaks and having good posture are also important.
>>
>> Secondly, we need to collect snippets of public domain text to be used
>> for practice typing.  These will need to be of varying difficulty
>> levels and lengths.  Possible sources might be Wikipedia articles, or
>> Project Gutenberg.
>
> We need some preliminary exercises for each keyboard layout, first to
> get the relative locations of the letters, and then to type single
> words using progressively greater stretches.

Yeah, that part is actually the harder one.  It took me two hours to
do a rough version of 'ASDFJKL;' based on researching existing typing
programs.

>> I would like to initially develop content for at least English and
>> Spanish, though we could start with one and then translate to the
>> other.
>
> We will need the French AZERTY layout for some Francophone countries.
> Then we will need Mongolian Cyrillic, Cambodian Khmer, Ethiopian
> Amharic, and Arabic alphabet layouts for Arabic (Palestinian
> territories), and Afghan Pashto and Dari. There are no doubt others
> that will be of importance soon.

Right, I basically want to focus on developing content for existing
deployments first, in largest to smallest order.  But, whatever good
content appears will get included :)

Cheers,
Wade