..HEAD02C-- MORSE PRACTICE DOCUMENTATION Page ## of 5 --

LICENSE and COPYRIGHT INFORMATION:

Morse Practice is Copyright (c) 1988 by the program's author
Larry S. Jones. All rights are reserved except as specifically
provided by the author.


FEATURES of VERSION 2.0:

1. Morse Practice (MP) now accepts the Morse characters AS, VA,
BT, and AR. ("wait", "I am done sending", "break", and "end of
message"

2. An expanded HELP facility is resident and available from the
"F1" or the "Alt + H" key strokes.

3. Two complete Morse lesson menus are now available for those
who find the command line startup tedious. The main menu is based
upon the Army character sequence and the alternative menu is
derived from the QWERTY typewriter keyboard layout.

4. The score sheet for Version 2.0 has been expanded. A
character graphic bar chart is displayed for the session
character. A bar chart is also displaying the average for each
attempted character for up to ten previous sessions.

5. Version 2.0 is not machine clock speed dependant. (Thanks to
Phillipe Kahn and Borland's Turbo C Compiler Crew!).

6. Version 2.0 has been tested on a variety of machines
including those which emulate the IBM (tm) XT/AT mold. MP
runs on a Monochrome/Hercules graphics card as well the CGA
and apparently many EGA clone cards.

7. Provision has been made in Version 2.0 to set an
environmental variable (MPDIRECT = NO) to disable direct screen
memory writes. This should allow the program to be run on PC's
which are BIOS compatible.



GETTING STARTED with Morse Practice Version 2.0.
(In 18 short paragraphs!)

Step by step, here is a sequence to follow when you first
start using Morse Practice.

1. Make a backup copy of the diskette containing Morse Practice
or copy the file MP.EXE to your hard disk (if you are lucky
enough to have one.) You may want to print this file also.




2. Invoke the program by entering its name followed by pressing
the key. Typically that looks like this:
A:\>MP
or
C:\MP

3. If step two suceeds, MP will start and display a brief banner
while simultaneously sounding a short Morse message at 30 words
per minute.

4. Next the Morse characters "HI" will be sent and the main
lesson menu will be displayed. Here you must make a choice
of using the main menu which uses the US Army's character lesson
sequence or using the alternative menu which is derived from the
QWERTY keyboard. If you are not a touch typist, you should be
able to learn Morse and "Touch" typing at the same time by taking
your lessons from the Alternative Menu. The Alternative Menu
is displayed by holding the Alt key and pressing the "M" key.

5. You can bring MP's help screens up at just about anytime by
pressing either "F1" or by holding "Alt" and pressing "H".

6. After a lesson number is entered, the main operating screen is
displayed. The center box contains the Morse characters which
will be sent during this session.

7. The sound you just heard was the left upper most character
sounded in International Morse Code. To hear it again, press
the space bar.

8. Press the key corresponding to the left upper character.

9. The short beeps indicate your response was correct. The next
sound you heard was the second from the left character being
sounded in Morse code.

10. This time deliberately pick a wrong response. The
unflattering sound hearlds an incorrect response.

11. Again pick a wrong key and press it. This time you will hear
a longer "wrong response" sound, but this second wrong pick will
cause the character to be flashed briefly on line 25.

12. After that hint, if you still get it wrong, you will be
summarily but ignominiously chided.

13. You can increase (+ key) and decrease (- key) the speed
during program execution. All the menus are preset to 8 WPM.
If you are starting out, keep the speed setting at 8 or above!
You must force yourself to hear and reflexively respond to an
element sound. You DO NOT have time to count dit's and dah's or
long's and shorts.



14. As mentioned, all the characters in the center box will be
sent in sequence (left to right, top to bottom) until they all
have been sent one time. Then the characters will be selected at
random until again all have been sent two times. This continues
until all have been sent 10 times each.

15. The score sheet appears next. You can cut short your lesson
at any time by pressing and answering "Yes". On the score
sheet, the left strip immediately above the Morse character
represents your score that character in the session just ended.

16. If you have run Morse Practice previously (and you saved your
session data to disk when asked if you wanted to) a second strip
will appear which represents your average for that character for
all previous sessions up to a maximum of 10 saved sessions. As
you continue, scores for the oldest sessions beyond 10 are
discarded after 10 have been accumulated in the file MP.DAT.


17. If you want to save this session so that the next time your
score can be averaged with previous scores, answer "Yes" by
pressing the "Y" key.

18. Finally, Morse Practice signs off with the sounding for
"good-by and best wishes" and displays the number of minutes you
spent in the previous session.


MORSE PRACTICE COMMAND LINE STARTUP:

Morse Practice can be started from the command line which will
by-pass both lesson menus. You may want to use this alternative
if you need additional practice on a few characters or want to
review several lessons. Several examples will demonsrate this
technique.

MP 10 1 A

Morse Practice will conduct a brief session by sounding
the Morse character code for the letter "A" until it has been
successfully identifed (Key "A" is pressed) The "A" will be sent
at a rate of 10 words per minute.

MP 20 10 A B C D

The Morse characters for the letters "A", "B", "C",
and "D" will be sent at a rate of 20 words per minute until all
four letters have been sent 10 times each.

MP 8 5 ? / BT AS

The Morse characters for the question mark, the slash
bar, the symbol for break, and the symbol for "wait" will be sent
until identified successfully five times each. The sounding will
initially proceed at a rate of eight words per minute.

MP 10 1 A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X
Y Z 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 . ? , / BT AR AS VA
(That's on one line. Don't hit enter until you get to VA)

Here MP will send every Morse character it knows one
time at a rate of 10 words per minute.


MORSE PRACTICE SCORING:

When the Morse character is first sounded, your key press
immediately following determines if that attempt is scored as
correct or as incorrect. You can use the to repeat a
sounding without being penalized. If you hear the low warbling
sound, your response was wrong and will be scored wrong even
though it is sent again with increasing help. (Finally the
character is flashed up on line 25 after two wrong guesses.) If
you hear the new character sound (short beeps), you know your
response was correct and a new letter will immediately be
sounded. Your score is computed from the following:

(nr_correct/nr_correct+nr_wrong) * 100.0


DIRECT SCREEN WRITING.

For reasons of speed, Morse Practice writes directly to video
adaptor memory when displaying anything. A 100 percent
compatible computer will accept this without complaint. If you
have display problems when running MP, try disabling the direct
screen writing by following these steps.

Prior to running Morse Practice, set an environmental "MPDIRECT"
to "NO" variable like this:
SET MPDIRECT=NO

(From the DOS Prompt, which is usually an A> or C>, type in the
above line, and then press the key.)

You can do this from a batch file if you find it helps.



PROBLEMS.

If you do experience a problem or find a bug, I would appreciate
knowing about it. A letter is fine. If you want a response,
please enclose postage and an addressed envelope. I will read
and incorporate your ideas in future updates and will do my best
to help you get the program running on your compatible machine.




COPYRIGHT and LICENSING INFORMATION.

Morse Practice is a copyrighted program and most all rights are
reserved by the author. It is not a public domain program and
not entirely free of cost or obligation.

You are granted a license to personally use, to copy the complete
un-modifed program including this documentation file, and give
the disk to anyone. If you charge a duplication fee, the fee
should be to defray the costs duplication and distribution,
which certainly should not exceed $7.00.

In return, your obligation to me is to let me know you are using
the program. Just drop me a card with your name and any comments
you would care to make to the address shown below. You'll feel
good having done so and I'll get the positive strokes I need to
expand, modify, and support the program. No money is requested,
just a card with your thanks and ideas.

This program may not be sold. All commercial rights are reserved
by the author as are the rights to derivations and future
enhanced versions.

Morse Practice Version 2 is the result of three months of spare
time, a super screen/object module generator (OSG Ver 1.05 from
Project X Development Software, Inventories Unlimited Inc., 222
Church Street, Philadelphia, PA 19106-2251), 5000+ lines of
Turbo C code (Version 1.5), and the mostly patient understanding
of my family. I wish you success in your study of International
Morse Code.

Larry S. Jones
P. O. Box 2396
Ferndale, WA 98248