Discussion:
[Tux4kids-tuxtype-dev] Question Tux Typing
David Bruce
14 years ago
Permalink
Hi Beth
I have a question about Tux Typing.. I want to use it in the lab with my
students and have them practice with their spelling words list.. is there a
way that I can copy that list to my 23 computer without having to get in and
type it on each machine?
You can certainly type the list once and then copy that file to each
machine, but there isn't a way to tell tuxtype to look in a different
place from the default for the word lists.

If your lab has windows machines like most schools, and if Tux Typing
is installed to the default location, the word lists (for English) are
located under:

C:\Program Files\tuxtype\data\words (this is from memory, not at a
Windows machine right now)

If you go to that folder, there will be a series of text files:
alphabet.txt, animals.txt, astronomy.txt, etc. You can create your
own word list file, put it in this folder, and tuxtype should find it.
Use a text editor such as NotePad, not a word processing program like
MS Word. The title of the word list goes on the first line, and the
words themselves are on each succeeding line (all capitals). The file
name needs to have the ".txt" extension.

One alternative you might consider is installing Tux Typing itself on
a network location that is visible from each of your lab's machines.
For example, if the computers all have "My Documents" mapped to a
location on a server, you could install Tux Typing under "My
Documents\tuxtype". You then would only have to add your custom word
list to this one machine. I know people have run tuxtype this way,
although the program wasn't really written with this in mind and may
occasionally crash if two instances of the program try to access the
same data file at the same time. Also, tuxtype runs a little slower
this way.

Hope that helps,
--
David Bruce

For all your software needs, visit The Apt Store:
deb http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian stable main
David Bruce
14 years ago
Permalink
Hi Beth,
Perfect answer... 2nd question.. my kids are working on Tux Typing and it
minimizes their screen and freezes their computer.. to fix I have to log
them off and start again...any ideas on how to fix?
Beth
Afraid I need more detailed information - what are they doing in Tux
Typing when this problem occurs? As for "it minimizes their screen
and freezes their computer" - a bug in Tux Typing should not be able
to crash a modern memory-protected OS. If Tux Typing becomes
unresponsive, you should be able to kill it using the Task Manager
which you can call up with Ctrl-Alt-Del (I'm assuming you are running
some form of Windows at your school - for OS-X or Linux you can find
tuxtype's process id with ps -A and then kill it). In other words, if
a bug in Tux Typing crashes Windows, it means there is also a bug in
Windows, and we all know Windows has no bugs ;)

Also, as I mentioned earlier, if you run tuxtype from a single network
installation, the instances of the program will occasionally crash
because they try to access the same file on the server at the same
time, and tuxtype wasn't designed with that type of use in mind,
although it's something we should address.

Hope that helps,

David Bruce
--
David Bruce

For all your software needs, visit The Apt Store:
deb http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian stable main
Beth Weeks
14 years ago
Permalink
Ok.. We are on Windows machines each child has their own student login.
so the kids are on Tux Typing doing the Easy Fish Cascade... their
little hand accidentally hits the Windows key and it will minimize the
Typing screen... the mouse won't work and the Start menu is up. I have
found a fix if anyone asks you about it again because I tried to do an
end task and that won't work... so... it was causing a lot of headache
because we had to log off the students and log them back on again...
Here is the fix... if the Start screen is still up press ESC to make it
go away. Press the tab key two times so that it has now selected the
minimize Tux Typing window and press enter and your screen will go back
to normal size.

I would love it if the windows key didn't do that to the program.. but
at least we don't have to log kids off and figure out what their student
ID and password is to log them back on.. we were working with Kinder and
1st grade!
Beth Weeks
...
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