The KLettres Handbook

KLettres is a very simple application that helps a child or an adult to learn the alphabet and some simple sounds in his own language or in another language. The program picks up a letter or a syllable in random, this letter/syllable is displayed and the sound is played. The user should then type this letter or syllable. Training is done in the levels where the letter/syllable is not displayed, only the sound is played. The user does not need to know how to use the mouse, the keyboard only is needed.

There are twenty languages available at the moment: Arabic, Czech, Brazilian Portuguese, British English, Danish, Dutch, English, French, German, Hebrew, Hungarian, Italian, Kannada, Low Saxon, Luganda, Malayalam, Romanized Hindi, Spanish, Slovak and Telugu. If your KDE language is among those, then it is taken as default, otherwise French is the default. You can easily get any additional available language by using the File menu and Get Alphabet in New Language... menu item, provided that your computer is connected to the Internet.

Two different modes allow you to adapt KLettres to your need and have the full usual interface or a stripped interface. For a child, the menubar is no longer visible. We assume that a child will not want to set the language himself. A combo box allows him to choose the different levels. For an older user, the background is not so childish and the menubar is present in the Grown-Up style. Three different themes (Kid, Desert and Savannah) set up a different background with different fonts and colors.

KLettres has 4 levels. Levels 1 and 2 deal with the alphabet and levels 3 and 4 concern syllables. For a very young child (2 1/2 to 4), I would suggest that he/she is sitting on your lap in front of the computer and that you do the game together.

Levels 1 and 2

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Level is Level 1, language is French, theme is Desert and mode is grown-up.

Note

If your KDE language is among the supported languages then this will be the default language the first time you run KLettres. For other languages, English is the default. KLettres comes with English, French and your default language if among those listed above and you can get additional languages via File Get Alphabet in New Language... provided you have an Internet connection.

In level 1, the user sees the letter and hears the sound. He then has to type in the letter in the box. If it is correct, the next letter appears (without having to press Enter or whatever). If the user types the wrong letter, he hears the sound again. In this level, the user memorizes the letters, associates them with their sound and recognizes them on the keyboard.

Note

The user can type in either lower or uppercase letters. The letters are automatically put in uppercase so that a child will match them with the keyboard. He can type only one letter at atime.

When you type a letter in the input field, there is no need to press Enter and the program waits for a short while before testing if the letter is right. This short wait is to leave time to a young child to understand what he/she just typed, especially if this is the wrong letter. You can change this time by using the Settings menu, Configure KLettres... and the Timer page which will bring you a dialog where you can set two different times: one for the Kid Mode and one for the Grown-up Mode.

After the first time, the language setting is saved in a configuration file on closing of KLettres and loaded the next time, with the level you were in.

The mode (kid or grown-up) is saved in the config file and therefore is kept until you change.

The letters appear in random order. They are not the same consecutively.

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Here is a screenshot of Level 2 with the kid mode, Kid theme and Danish language.

Clicking in the Level combo-box and choosing Level 2 or using the Level menu brings you to level 2. In that level, the user only hears the sound of the letter and has to type in the letter. If he is wrong, the letter appears to help him.

Levels 3 and 4

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Using KLettres

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Levels 3 and 4

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Here you can see KLettres level 3, grown-up mode, Savannah theme and Czech language.

In level 3, the user sees the syllable and hears the sound. He then has to type in the letters in the box. If the first letter of the sound is wrong, the user cannot type in the second one. The letter disappears and he has to try again. The number of letters is two or three, it depends of the language.

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Here you can see KLettres level 4, kid mode, Desert theme and Slovak language.

The sounds appear in random order.

Clicking in the Level combo-box or using the Level menu in the menubar and choosing Level 4 brings you to level 4. In that level, the user only hears the sound of the syllable and has to type in the letters. This level is quite difficult for a young child.

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Using KLettres	Using KLettres	Configuration dialog

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Configuration dialog

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Configuration dialog

The configuration dialog has two pages: one for Font Settings and one for the Timer.

About fonts

You can easily change the font that displays the letters. In some distribution, the default font used from the system is really ugly. In grown-up mode, in the Settings menu, in Configure KLettres... you will find a Font Settings page with a font chooser dialog. The new font will be applied to both the displayed letter/syllable and the user field.

Warning

Changing font is also nice as some fonts (Helvetica for example) do not display correctly East-European languages as Czech and Slovak. If some letters or syllables are not displayed, please change the font and choose Arial for example.

You can also choose here the size you like the best. This size will be kept in configuration.

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Here you can see KLettres Font Chooser Dialog.

Timers

The timers set the time between two letters i.e. the time during wich a letter is displayed. The units are tenths of seconds.

The Timer page in the Settings->Configure KLettres... dialog has two timers settings: one for the Kid Mode and one for the Grown-up Mode. Defaults are 4 tenths of seconds for Kid Mode and 2 tenths of seconds for Grown-up Mode. Increasing the time leaves you more time to see your errors.

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Levels 3 and 4	Using KLettres	Getting a new language

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Getting a new language

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Getting a new language

You might want to use KLettres to help you learn a new language. By using File Get Alphabet in New Language..., you will see a new dialog with the list of available languages (you need to be connected to the Internet to use that feature).

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Click on the Install button on the left of the language you want to install. You'll see the progress bar indicating how the download is progressing. The next screenshot shows Danish being downloaded.

Please note that some files have several MB so it might be slow depending on your connection.

After the file is downloaded, it is automatically installed and when you close the Get Hot New Stuff dialog you'll see the new language in the Language menu and you can use it immediately.

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When a language is downloaded, you then can see the Install button turning to Uninstall and a green tick appears next to the language name to tell you that this language is available in KLettres.

The next screenshot shows Danish installed.

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Configuration dialog	Using KLettres	Command Reference

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If you would like to add sounds in your own language, it is very easy to do so. Record the alphabet sounds and place them in a folder named 'alpha'. Then record the most current syllables and put them in a folder named 'syllab'.

Create a text file sounds.xml, preferably using Kate as editor or another editor capable of different encoding. In this file, write all the alphabet sounds and syllable sounds you recorded, like this example for the czech language:

<klettres>
<language code="cs">
    <menuitem>
      <label>&Czech</label>
    </menuitem>
    <alphabet>
        <sound name="A" file="cs/alpha/a.ogg" />
	...
    </alphabet>
    <syllables>
        <sound name="BA" file="cs/syllab/ba.ogg" />
	...
    </syllables>
  </language>
</klettres>

Replace "cs" with the two letter code and "Czech" with the name of your language. Write the sound names with the special characters of your language in uppercase in utf8.

Additionally you can tell me about special letters in your language so I can easily generate the special Special Characters toolbar. Create a text file cs.txt (replace "cs" with the two letter code of your language) with each special character of your language in uppercase on one line. And save both text files with “utf8” encoding (upper right dropbox in Kate allows that)

The sounds should be in ogg format and long enough for the audio player to play them (between 1.5 and 2 seconds long, please add some silence if they are too short). Then make a tarball of all that and send it to me.

See the KLettres website for more up to date instructions on how to add a new language.

This document may have been updated since your installation. You can find the latest version at http://docs.kde.org/.

KLettres

Program copyright 2001-2007 Anne-Marie Mahfouf (annma AT kde.org)

I am very grateful to the following people whose contribution has been greatly valuable:

Documentation copyright 2001-2006 Anne-Marie Mahfouf(annma AT kde.org)

This documentation is licensed under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License.

This program is licensed under the terms of the GNU General Public License.