THE ubiquitous John C. Dvorak, who seems to have regular columns in about half the computer publications on the newsstand and his name on a couple of popular computer books, now has his byline and face on a box containing a piece of software. Dvorak on Typing is an entertaining and handsome program designed for both beginners and intermediate and advanced typists.
The program starts with a test to determine your level. I foolishly imagined I would be classified as an advanced typist, but Mr. Dvorak easily exposed me. "Beginner," he said. (Rationalization: Anyone who writes on a keyboard, rather than retyping other people's stuff, tends to go in fits and starts; also, mistakes made on a computer are so readily corrected that you don't much mind them.)
By the way, the program really did say "Beginner," for Dvorak on Typing talks. It will speak in a choice of three voices: Tracy, a child; John, Mr. Dvorak himself, or Loren, a woman. The voice reads the letters as you type them and may note problems and make recommendations. However, the speaker in your personal computer will have to be better than the one in mine for this to be of real appeal. The voices can be silenced.
The program goes from such elementary matters as identifying the home row (beginner), through work on problem keys and the numeric keypad (intermediate) to drills to increase speed and accuracy (advanced).
Three kinds of reports are given. The first two show the percentage of accuracy and words per minute typed for that day's lesson and the preceding four days; the third shows the keys that give you the most trouble.
The lessons can be used to master the conventional keyboard or the more efficient Dvorak keyboard, which, for a change, is not named after John C., but after August Dvorak, who remapped the typewriter keyboard in 1936 to put the most commonly used letters in more accessible places. But by then the inefficient conventional arrangement was too firmly entrenched.
By way of digression, there are two explanations for the conventional, or "QWERTY," keyboard, which is named after the first five characters on the top row of letters. The usual story is that fast typists were apt to jam keys on early typewriters and that the arrangement was devised to slow them down. The other explanation, given in the "Software Toolworks Illustrated Encyclopedia," is that the keyboard was for the convenience of typewriter salesmen: all the letters in the word "typewriter" are in that top row, and they could demonstrate how to use the marvelous new machine without fumbling around. End of digression.
Besides doing the drills in the program, you can create your own lessons. You can type in any text and then set standards for words per minute and accuracy for retyping. This could be particularly useful for instructors who would like to put a personal touch on the program or for those who often have to type material with unusual demands: lots of initials, for instance, or the jargon of a business or profession.
For a diversion, there is also a game. A knight encounters a number of ferocious adversaries; his fate depends on your typing ability.
Dvorak on Typing was developed by the Park Place Production Team of Oceanside, Calif. It is a product of Interplay Productions of Santa Ana, Calif. The version I used is for MS-DOS computers with at least 512 kilobytes of memory for Tandy, EGA or CGA graphics modes or 640 kilobytes for VGA. It has a suggested retail price of $49.95 and can be purchased at software outlets or directly from Interplay by calling (800) 969-GAME. A Macintosh version is in the works. More Typing Help
To avoid further humiliation, I did not try Typing 101, a keyboard program from Parsons Technology . It generates its drills from a vocabulary of 15,000 words, eliminating, according to the company, much of the tedium of traditional typing drills.
Typing 101 also has an instructor mode for creating classroom and corporate lessons and a game, Letter Blaster, in which your typing skill can save, or lose, the day.
Typing 101 is for computers with at least 320 kilobytes of memory running DOS 2.11 or higher. The retail price is $49 and it is available from Parsons; call (800) 223-6925.