Klavaro Touch Typing Tutor

Klavaro Touch Typing Tutor is a cross-platform typing tutorial program to get new and rusty typists up to speed on the latest techniques. Unlike with other packages, this one is supported on Windows, Mac OS X, and several flavors of Linux (OpenBSD, FreeBSD, Fedora, Ubuntu, and Debian).

Klavaro you get to practice efficient typing by performing four types of exercises. Each exercise is a step up in difficulty from the previous one. The Basic Course is comprised of 43 exercises in which you type to match different arrays of letters and symbols intended to help new typists remember the selected keyboard layout. Random characters are requested to test their recall of where keys are located. These are very repetitive and could potentially turn you away from Klavaro altogether. Not to mention that they give you wrist sores, the likes you’ve never experienced before.

But don’t lose hope just yet. The second course gets a bit better. In this one, you will need to type in random assortments of letters, numbers, and symbols. This is called “Adaptability”. Theoretically, this one and the Basic Course take into account that you are familiarizing yourself with the position of the keys and that you are typing using the recommended assignment of fingers to keys. Good thing I learned to type well by myself. Now I can just ignore this nonsense.

The third and fourth courses are the best. “Velocity” presents you with some sort of written gibberish, but at least it has an adequate number of vowels to consonants and very few random characters. “Fluidity” features regular text that you can also source yourself from a text file.

Adaptability exercises focus on a random selection of keys to prompt quickness and flexibility for those times when typing words that are unfamiliar to the user. Velocity exercises focus on typing a passage at a quick speed.

Fluidness exercises look at the ability to type out complete paragraphs that make sense which is the most practical, real-life scenario.

The software aims to provide support for many different keyboard styles than are typically included in American typing programs. There are at least 23 different languages or styles of the keyboard in the QUERTY keyboard layout configuration. The alternative Dvorak keyboard layout which promotes faster typing and less reaching with the little fingers for common keystrokes is supported in 12 languages and types. There is also support for Qwertz, Azerty, Jtsuken, Colemak and AlphaGrip5.

There is also a keyboard layout editor to re-configure the key positions and then save the new layout. This makes it possible to create keyboards for other languages and layouts not supported yet, plus to create a completely custom keyboard layout and practice typing on that.

Text files can be loaded into the software for several of the tests to make them similar to the type of content needed for work, for study, and so on.

Klavaro Touch Typing Tutor Features

• Internationalization: Czech, English, Esperanto, French (incomplete), German (incomplete), Hungarian, Portuguese and Swedish.
• Keyboard layout editor: makes possible to configure the keys’ positions and to save the result in a simple text file. If your keyboard isn’t shown above, you can create it. If you need to do it, please let us know about.
• Ready to use keyboard layouts:

1. 1. “qwerty” (BR; BR_abnt0; BR_abnt2; CZ; EL; ES; HE; IT; PT; SE; US)
   2. “Dvorak” (BR; FR; US; US_BR; US_ES; US_SE)
   3. “qwertz” (CZ; DE; HU)
   4. “azerty” (FR)
   5. “jtsuken” (RU)

• Basic course: a basic type, of course, is available for memorizing the keys positions on the keyboard. It is supposed to be independent of the keyboard layout, by the generation of random character sequences to be followed by the student.
• Adaptability exercises: these exercises use all the keys randomly so that you can practice using all the keyboards. It’s named adaptability exercise because it develops the capacity to adapt your typing skills to any kind of strange words that may appear in some texts.
• Velocity exercises: one achieves velocity on typing when the environment is well known, or when the words come from one’s own language. That’s why these exercises focus on velocity. And even if your language isn’t supported by the application, you still can indicate texts in any language to include the words contained there.
• Fluidness exercises: with these exercises, one works typing complete paragraphs, with good sense sentences. Typing errors aren’t accepted: the user must correct them with the backspace key before be allowed to go on. Especial attention is given to the typing rhythm, which must be as uniform as possible. Just like the velocity exercises, this one here makes possible to load any text files, independently of language.
• Progress charts: at the accomplishment of each exercise, some characteristics of your performance are saved and can be graphically shown. Thus, you can easily observe your learning progress (or regress).
• Clean graphical interface: when learning to type correctly, one must not get the attention of the exercises. So, it is recommended neither to have dozens of gauges measuring velocity, errors, time, etc; nor a virtual keyboard floating in front of the student: he/she must memorize the key positions by the tact, not visually. Hence, Klavaro’s interface started simple and will remain like that for all of its lifetimes.

Klavaro Pros and Cons

System Requirement

Technical Specification

Conclusion

Klavaro Touch Typing Tutor is a good typing tutor with an effective and varied number of tests from random key selection to typing passages of text. There is also a virtual keyboard to show new typists where to place their fingers.