Application Of The Month: KTouch

As part of the May 2002 issue of "Application of the month" series on KDE.de, Klaus Stärk has interviewed Håvard Frøiland, author of KTouch. KTouch is part of the KDE Edutainment Project and provides a quick and fun way to learn the useful and impressive skill of touch typing. See the main homepage for further details and screenshots -- the interview follows.

First of all: Congratulations for publishing the first official release of the KDE Edutainment family. What's the current state of this KDE project concerning the initiation of new education applications ?

First of all I would like to say thank you on the behalf of the hard working KDE Edutainment team. I have not been able to follow the progress of the kdeedu package lately, and therefore I have had to get some help from the mailing list, concerning the current status. Thanks to Anne-Marie.

We are currently preparing new programs for the KDE3.1 release: a maths plotter program, a Japanese language learning tool, a tool to learn Spanish verbs, a Norwegian verbs learning tool, a flash card tool, and a hangman game. We are also preparing for the KDE 3.2 release, which will have two mathematics tools, one for primary school children, and one for young adults.

How did you start the KTouch project and who else is involved in it?

KTouch was started as a way of learning C++ and QT. I had previously started a couple of other projects based on Java, which were also educational applications. These applications never made their way to the web though. Also the spirit of open-source is great, and I wanted to contribute to it. In my opinion, to make free software is one step in helping us to level out the differences out there.

I have had small contributions to KTouch from various people with translations, training files, keyboard layouts, graphics and different sounds. Christian Spener was working with me for a while, helping out with the web page and stuff. He also tried to make a qt-only application that would run on Windows. I haven't had any major contributions to the code itself though.

Do you know of any plans for CD-ROM-based CBT-programs (Computer Based Training) for the KDE Edutainment family, e.g. some kind of multimedia application to learn a foreign language?

Not yet I think. At least I have not heard of anything like that. The KDE-Edutainment project started just 8 months ago so it is still very young. The fact that KTouch and KStars existed before, allowed a strong start for the project and a release of the kdeedu package so soon. We are not in the position yet of filling a CD with educational KDE software! Thanks to Anne-Marie for answering this question.

Do you have any more features planned for KTouch?

Yes, I want to finish the statistics page. As you can see there are a couple of missing pages in it. I have also started work on adding support for editing the training files, and have the possibility to run tests. The test will be a page with text that you have to type as fast as possible with the least amount of errors. Then after you are finished, it will tell you your words per minute (wpm) and how accurate your typing was.

I also want to remove the splash screen and write a touch typing tutorial to go in the help page. And while I am at it, I also want to put all the configuration stuff in a proper KDE configuration dialog.

What do you think about Open Source and what is the reason for you personally to publish KTouch under the GPL ?

I am mainly doing this for fun, and I am glad that so many people can use this application since it is GPL. I am also using many GPL applications myself, and would like to give something back to the Open Source community.

I like the idea that this application is meant for educational purposes, as I feel this group often has difficulty when it comes to purchasing software, and some of the programs are certainly not cheap.

Do you know other KDE developers? Do you know them just virtually or in person as well?

I only know a few people very briefly, just some of the girls and boys in the kde edu project. And of course Christian Spener who worked with me for some time.

I don't know any of these people in person though, only through e-mails or IRC.

How much time do you usually spend per week working on the KDE project?

It really depends, it goes up and down. In the past I have got most of it done when I have had heaps to do at UNI. Now that I am starting work, I don't know how much time I will spend on it. But in Norway we have some dark autumn nights with rain and wind, when some coding could be done. ;-)

What's the most common Desktop Environment used on your workplace? (If not KDE, why not? :-)

Well, I haven't started there yet. But I am afraid that most of the stuff is running on Windows at the moment. There could be some changes to that though, if the word of KDE get out.

Here in Germany, we had an initiative called "BundesTux" that aims at bringing Linux to the servers and desktops of the German parliament (with quite a good success: all Bundestag servers will run under Linux in future!). What's the situation with using free software in the Norwegian parliament?

I am not sure about this, but I know that we have a big project called "Skolelinux", and information about this can be found at www.skolelinux.no". This is a project that aims towards making a specialized distribution for schools, with lots of different educational applications.

What's your opinion about the future of "Linux on the desktop"?

I can't see how we can avoid it. A Linux solution running KDE is in my opinion much better than a Windows solution. The biggest problem is Microsoft Words dominating position in the word processing market. But we now have several fast evolving office solutions coming up, and I guess that we will see more and more migration to free software solutions.

I also think it would have helped if we had a distribution that only focused on a graphical environment for office workers. Making it extremely easy, and remove all the servers, developing tools, and other applications that the average person doesn't use. Instead focus on a set of office tools, like word processing, spread sheets, e-mail and so forth. What about a KDE distro. ;-)

What's the configuration of your computer, and which Linux distribution do you use for your daily work ?

At the moment I am running Mandrake 8.2 and KDE 3.0 on a 600 Athlon processor, with 128 mb memory. It runs well, but I really need some more memory. I really like KDE 3.0, there are many great improvements and everything looks really good. KOffice is also getting along very well.

What do you do in your spare time when you're not coding for the KDE-project?

My biggest interest is climbing and spending time with friends. I am also keen on bush walking and like spending time in the mountains. Scuba diving and parachuting is also something I do from time to time. And then of course I play around with bits of code from time to time.

Thanks a lot for joining the "app-of-month" :-)

Thanks for choosing KTouch, this was fun. ;-)

Håvard Frøiland: havard.froiland@chello.no
KTouch: http://edu.kde.org/ktouch
Klaus Stärk: staerk@kde.org
Application of the month: http://www.kde.de/appmonth