Future of KTouch

[Jeremy Whiting]

Peter,

Welcome, ktouch is in need of some love for sure.

On Wed, Jun 1, 2011 at 5:59 AM, Peter Rüthemann
<peter.ruethemann at gmail.com>wrote:

> Hello everyone
>
> Some may have noticed that I did some minor contributions to KTouch in
> the last few weeks. So, I think it’s time to introduce myself.
>
> My name is Peter and I’m living in the German speaking part of
> Switzerland. I did my master degree in biochemistry at the University
> of Zurich and I’m working now in a pharmaceutical company. So actually
> I don’t have much experience with coding. But I was always interested
> in software development and because I’m a KDE user since 2006, I
> decided to contribute to this project. I started in the German
> translation team, where I’m still active and continued with KTouch.
>

That's awesome, we have some developers around Zurich btw,  might want to
see if any are nearby. (And a sprint happening right now in Randa too).


> KTouch has some really annoying, but really easy to fix, bugs. I fixed
> some of those and I think KTouch is now already a bit user friendlier.
>
> For KDE 4.8 I would like to introduce some new features. Some of them
> are actually already implemented but they just don’t work (maybe due
> to the transition from KDE 3 to 4). These are my primary ideas:
>
> 1.      Better connection between keyboard and lecture files. (If you load
> for example an ergonomic keyboard the corresponding lecture should
> open as well)
>
2.      Group the keyboard and lecture files in subfolders according to
> their language. (A normal user is mainly only interested in one or two
> languages but not all)
> 3.      It should be easier for beginners which have never used a keyboard
> before. (At the moment KTouch opens a default lecture. The default
> lecture is used as a manual for KTouch)
> 4.      Statistics: End of lecture statistics / Possibility to save
> statistic
> 5.      Design: KTouch looks very old fashioned. (However, I’m not a
> designer)
>

Those all look and sound very good.  KTouch interface indeed feels dated and
all those things you list would be improvements for sure.  If you need any
help with coding, etc. we are always friendly in #kde-edu on
irc.freenode.org (or on this list if you prefer e-mail).


> I just want to know what you think of it. Is there anything I should
> consider or do you have some ideas? Do you know if the former
> developers of KTouch are still active?
>

Former KTouch developers have been inactive for quite some time afaik.  One
thing that gets brought up by school teachers is the ability to filter bad
words out of the lessons.  Some are generated randomly, but ideally would be
if the generator used some white-list of words approved for kids to
read/type.


Thanks for looking into KTouch, you rock,
Jeremy
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