P C - T O U C H (C) Copyright 1983, 1984, 1985, 1986 by Dean Hannotte 318 East Sixth Street New York, NY 10003 PC-TOUCH is a simple program with a simple purpose: to help you practice touch-typing. PC-TOUCH will display on the screen lines of text for you to type. You can't correct mistakes as you go along, because that won't help you learn how not to make them in the first place. Just do the best you can, and as you continue you will find yourself making fewer and fewer errors. As you are typing, PC-TOUCH will update statistics along the bottom two rows of the screen. On the left you will see the total number of keystrokes and the total number of erroneous keystrokes. On the right you will see your typing accuracy as the percentage of keystrokes which have been correct, and your typ- ing speed in words per minute. The statistics on the left are updated whenever you press any key, while those on the right are updated whenever you get to the end of a line. Remember that when you are just learning to type, accuracy is more important than speed. To use PC-TOUCH, just key in: [c:]pc-touch where: [c:] is the optional drive specification, a single letter from a to h. pc-touch is the name of the program DOS will run. means press the ENTER key. PC-TOUCH starts by giving you instructions on how to use the program. Aside from the keys you will use to type the lines of text displayed, there are only three special keys recognized: ENTER -- Press this key when you get to the end of each line. ESC ---- Press this key when you are done with the program. F1 ----- Press this key when you want to stop typing for a while (for example, to answer the phone) and don't want to lose credit for the elapsed time during which nothing will be typed. (When you are ready to restart, just press F1 a second time.) PC-TOUCH doesn't recognize any other special keys because the idea was to practice touch-typing in a way that would be valid for ANY keyboard, including ancient office typewriters you may be stranded with once in a while. (If enough people ask for more sensitivity to the special keys on the IBM/PC [like INS, DEL and the cursor control keys], I'll be glad to include this in a future re- lease.) PC-TOUCH should work with any display device that supports 80-column output. PC-TOUCH is distributed as four files: PC-TOUCH.DOC -- this file, containing documentation. The program doesn't need this file to operate, so you can ERASE, RENAME, or archive it. PC-TOUCH.EXE -- the compiled version of the program. You will need this if the interpreted version (PC-TOUCH.BAS) is not fast enough. PC-TOUCH.FIL -- the lines of text that you will type. The program needs this file to operate, so you must leave it in a drive addressed by the letter C or A. PC-TOUCH will choose the first copy it finds if you have more than one. This file is an ordinary ASCII file, so you can change the material I've selected or replace it entirely using any ordinary text editor. Don't make any line longer than 79 characters. After you've typed through the entire file, PC-TOUCH goes back to the beginning and you start over. PC-TOUCH.BAS -- the source program. You can use this to make your own modifications to the program, or just to get some ideas about how this kind of program is written. Only the first three of these files are necessary. The source program can be used to make your own modifications. (If you got PC-TOUCH from a bulletin board and they gave you the .BAS file but not the .EXE file, just let them know that they're packaging the program incorrectly.) PC-TOUCH has been given free of charge and "as is" to the New York IBM Personal Computer User Group (NYPC). Please share it with as many people as you like. If you'd like to suggest enhancements, or just want to talk about it, I can be reached at (212) 674-5848 between 9AM and 9PM. I hope you enjoy using PC-TOUCH, and that it helps improve your typing speed. Sincerely, Dean Hannotte