MAVIS BEACON TEACHES TYPING! RUNNING THE PROGRAM Kickstart your Amiga as you normally would using Kickstart 1.2 or later (if you have an Amiga 500 or 2000 you won't need to do this because Kickstart is built into your machine.) When you are asked to insert your Workbench disk, place your Mavis Beacon distribution disk in the internal drive. The Workbench will come up normally. Double-click on the Mavis disk icon. A window containing icons for Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing and the Resume Writer will appear. To run Mavis, just double-click on the Mavis icon. We'll discuss the Resume Writer a little later. THE WELCOME SCREEN The first dialog box presents you with four choices: "Meet Mavis", "Help for New Users", "Start the Lessons", and "Quit Mavis". First time users should choose "Meet Mavis" and "Help for New Users" to get a feel for how Mavis works before launching right into the lessons. These options demonstrate Mavis' features and allow you to get online-help for the major functions of the program. When you feel comfortable with Mavis, choose "Start the Lessons" and you'll be off and running! Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing keeps a list of all users and their progress on the data disk. This information is used to identify you the next time you use the program. At this point Mavis will open a dialog box which asks for some personal information, including your name, skill level and age group. The practice time value and the target speed will be set automatically according to your personal data, but you are free to change these settings as well. After you have finished entering the data, click on the "Done" button to see the Chalkboard for your first lesson! THE CHALKBOARD The lesson plan for the next lesson is always shown on the Chalkboard. Read the suggestion carefully. You will always be presented with the option to do what the program suggests (click on "Yes, let's do that") or to do something else. The scroll bar at the right of the chalkboard allows you to see all of the lesson suggestion if it doesn't fit on the screen. SOME LESSONS WITH MAVIS When you click on "Yes, let's do that," Mavis brings up the appropriate work environment and begins the lesson. If this is a race game you will be placed in the cockpit of the "Typing Racer." Otherwise, you will find yourself in the "Classroom" or the "Workshop." The Classroom It is here that Mavis presents new material, the "Keys and Fingers" exercises and many of her "drill" type lessons. The classroom consists of a view of the Amiga keyboard at the bottom of the screen and a "Typing Window" in the uper half of the screen that runs the entire width of the screen. It is here that the text for the lesson appears. When the text for the lesson is displayed, it appears as a number of lines of yellow text, with a blank line between each. The cursor appears in the upper left corner of the window, one line below the text that Mavis wants you to type. If you make a mistake, the character will appear in red and the "bad character" sound will be played on the speaker. When you have typed the entire text of the lesson, Mavis will bring up a dialog telling you how well you did. For beginning typists, Mavis offers "Keys and Fingers" lessons. In these lessons, Mavis tells you what keys to type and shows you what fingers to use to type them. For these lessons (and many others) the guide hands appear over the keyboard and show you the proper positioning for your fingers. The Workshop The Workshop is very similar to the Classroom, except that the "Typing Window" is narrower to accommodate some special "gadgets" that Mavis uses to emplasize different typing situations. These include: *Let's play a Game: This causes Mavis to convert the lesson she has suggested into a racing game. This option only appears if Mavis has not suggested a race already. Otherwise, this option becomes "Let's do a Lesson", which causes Mavis to convert the race she has suggested into a classroom or workshop lesson. *Make Another Suggestion: Causes Mavis to suggest the "next best" lesson and to display a new Chalkboard suggestion. *Repeat the last Lesson: Perhaps you feel you could do a lesson better if you had another chance. This option gives you the ability to go back and try again. *Make Your Own Lesson: Making this selection lets you design a custom lesson for yourself. There are many choices in the Made Own Lesson dialog box. You may change one or all of them: *Emphasis: Clicking on this box changes the emphasis for this lesson. Choose an emphasis from Speed, Accuracy or General. *Lesson Type: Clicking on this box changes the lesson type. Choose from Keyboard, Race Game or Guided Keys Tour. *Lesson Text: Clicking on this changes the source of text for this lesson. Choose from Specific Keys, Problem Character Words, Left Hand Words, Right Hand Words, Hurdle Words, Famous Quotes, Guiness Records, Fun Facts, Fiction, Jokes, Riddles, 500 Most Used Words, Employment Tests, Correspondence, number Practice and Symbol Practice. *Text Format: Clickin on this changes the way the text is presented within the lesson. Choose from Standard Format, which presents the text "as is", Barrier Typing, which presents only the next eight characters at a time, Transcription Typing, which sends the text to a printer, Pattern Typing which emphasizes common word patterns, and shift Key Practice which presents the text with the first character of every word shifted to uppercase. *Specific Keys: This text box allows you to enter up to ten characters which Mavis will emphasize in this lesson. NOTE: this is only active when you choose the specific Keys option on the Lesson Text gadget. *Lesson Length: This allows you to set the upper limit for the length of this lesson (in words). *Lesson Time: This allows you to set the upper limit for the amount of time this lesson will take. If set to zero, Mavis will allow unlimited time. However, if you set it to anything else, Mavis will interrupt the lesson when the amount of time has elapsed, regardless of whether or not you have finished the lesson. However, she will allow you to continue the lesson if you desire. *Target Speed: This option sets the speed of the metronome (for a lesson) or the race car (for a game). If you do not set the speed, it will be set to your goal speed. THE MENUS A number of other options are available through the menu bar. This is a standard Amiga menu bar and can be accessed at any time by holding down the right mouse button, moving the pointer to the menu you want and releasing the button when the option you want is highlighted. The three menus that appear in the menu bar are discussed below. THE PROJECT MENU This menu allows you to perform various record-keeping functions, such as editing your records, saving current settings, printing a progress report, and removing typist records from the disk. There are also items on this menu to get help or quit the program. The choices available on the Project Menu are as follows: *About Mavis: Gives you a brief dialog about Mavis, including the version number of your disk. *Help: Brings up the online help dialog. This dialog gives you some basic information about Mavis. one of the neat things about Mavis' help is that it is "context-sensitive." That is, she knows what you are doing at any given time and offers information about that particular feature. if that isn't what you're looking for, click on the "More" button and Mavis will give you a list of all available help topics. To choose a topic, simply click on the one you want help with and click the "Okay" button. A scorll bar at the right of the dialog allows you to see all of the list (there are a lot of topics!) When you have found what you're looking for, simply click the "Done" button t\on the help dialog and it will disappear, leaving you where you were before you asked for help. One more thing, the "HELP" button on your keyboard will also bring up the online help system, providing you with a handy keyboard shortcut. *Save Settings: This item saves Mavis current settings. This includes all of the items available on the "Learning Aids", "Teaching Style" and "Keyboard Design" dialogs, which we'll be discussing shortly. *Edit Your Records: This displays the "Getting to Know You" dialog (which you fill out when you sign in initially) and allows you to change the items displayed there. *Print Report Card: This allows you to produce a printed record of your progress. *Remove a Typist: This allows you to delete the records of any particular typist. NOTE: Mavis will not allow you to delete your own records if you are currently signed in. If you ever need to do this, sign in as a new user (with a different name), delete the offending records and change the name of the new user (using Edit Your Records) to your own. *Quit: This lets you leave Mavis. When you leave, Mavis will update your records on the disk. The Options Menu This menu gives you options that allow you to change Mavis' behavior. The following items appear in this menu: *Learning Aids: This item allows you to change some of the "gadgets" Mavis uses in her lessons. A dialog pops up displaying the list of gadgets and two columns of buttons. The first column is labeled "Mavis Decides." The buttons in this column are either ON (filled white) or OFF (black.) When "Mavis Decides" is "On" for any particular gadget, then Mavis is allowed to change that gadget for each lesson. When "Mavis Decides" is "Off", however, Mavis is not allowed to change that gadget and will modify her suggestions accordingly. The other columns of buttons allows you to change the state of any particular gadget. To make a change, simply click on the button of the gadget that you want changed and you will see the next option for that gadget. Also, notice that the "Mavis Decides" button is turned off. That means that whatever you select stays selected until you decide otherwise. If you choose "Save Settings" on the "Project" menu, these selections will remain for all subsequent sessions. The gadgets you may change are as follows: *Metronome: The settings for the metronome are "Off", "Ticking" or "Silent", which allows you to show the metronome without it making any noise. Note that if you turn the metronome, the clock or the meters on, the classroom screen will become narrow so that there is room to show the gadget you've selected. If all of these are shut off, however, the screen will remain wide. *Meters: The meters, which show you dynamically how well you're doing as you type, may be turned on or off. *Clock: The elapsed time clock has three settings: Off, Analog (shich shows a regular clock with hands) and Digital (shich of course displays an LED digital clock). *Show Cursor: This allows you to turn the text cursor on or off. *Show Keytops: This allows you to decide whether or not the onscreen keytops are labeled. *Show Hands: This allows you to turn the guide hands on or off. *Show Lighted: This allows you to decide if the onscreen keytops should depress when you type the corresponding key. *Accept Errors: This option determines whether or not Mavis accepts an error. If so, when you type an error, you will be allowed to continue typing without correcting the error, otherwise, you won't be allowed to continue typing until you have hit the right key. Also on the "Learning Aids" dialog are gadgets that allow you to change the speed at which the metronome ticks and at which the pace car is set. These consist of a text box, an up arrow and a down arrow. clicking the up arrow increases the speed by on while the down arrow decreases the speed by one. You may also change the speed by clicking in the box where the number appears and typing in a new number. *Teaching Style presents you with a set of choices which control how Mavis "thinks". It's best that you wait until you are familiar with the program before using these features. In any case, if you feel like experimenting, the settings are as follows: *Advice level Terse or Verbose are the settings. Verbose is the normal level. This determines how much advise Mavis gives on her chalkboard messages. If you select Terse, Mavis will just give you the Problem, Remedy and Focus lines when she makes a suggestion. *Chatty Comments: This allows you to select whether or not Mavis makes her "off the cuff" comments between lessons. *Past Lessons: this determines to what extent Mavis considers past lessons when she creates new lessons. *Frustration noticed: This setting determines the degree to which Mavis considers user frustration when she creates new lessons. *Lesson mix: This setting allows you to force Mavis to suggest only games, only lessons, or a mixture of both. *Keyboard Design brings up a dialog box with the following options that allow you to change the behavior of the "typing machine": *Keyboard: This option allows you to change the type of keyboard you wish to type on. The choices are the so-called "Qwerty" (standard on the Amiga) and Dvorak keyboards. Dvorak is a special "high-efficiency" keyboard layout and is discussed in more depth in the accompanying booklet, Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing. *End of Line: If this option is set to wordwrap, then you don't need to type the RETURN key at the ends of the lines. However in Typewriter mode, you'll be required to type a RETURN at the end of each line. *Backspace: The Backspace key option allows you to enable or disable the BACKSPACE key. *Spaces after '.': This option allows you to determine the number of spaces Mavis will normally display after each period. *Turn Sound On/Off on the Options menu allows you to tell Mavis whether or not to be quiet. The Requests Menu This menu provides y9ou access to some of Mavis' other operating modes, including a couple of features that show you how well you're doing. The items on this menu are: *Freetyping: this option allows you to simply use Mavis as a "TV" typewriter. That is, you can use this mode to just practice your typing without the pressure of trying to do well at a lesson or a race. You can also play with some of the gadgets discussed above in the section on the "Learning Adis" dialog. *Keys and Fingers: This is a great way to brush up your fingering technique. Mavis tells you which letter you typed and shows you which finger to use. *Display Graphs displays your progress charts. There are plenty of choices hers, so experiment with this one! *Show Proficient Keys displays the keys on which you exdeed your goal speed. THE RESUME WRITER The Resume Writer is a separate program that will help you prepare your resume. This short summary of your epxerience and qualifications is an essential tool in looking for a job. Everything is self-explanatory and help is available within the program. HAVE FUN!!! =============================================================================== Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing docs brought to you by The Southern Star.