Note: This project is still in the planning phase. No software is currently available for download. For more information see the project page on SourceForge.net
The purpose of this software is to help students of foreign languages practice grammar and vocabulary, by transforming web-pages into exercises on the fly. A student should be able to browse the web for texts that (s)he is interested in, and then use these texts as training material.
Exercises would typically consist of the software replacing certain words by either a clue + a text input box or a “multiple choice” list, and the student has to find the right word. Examples of things that could be replaced include verbs (especially irregular ones) confoundable words (such as lie/lay), prepositions, et cetera.
It is a goal of the project to give the software the best possible chances of growth. This is accomplished through several means:
Open Source distribution. All the source code of the project should be freely available to anyone, under the terms of the GNU General Public License.
Links to existing strong open source projects. Relying on the Firefox web browser as a base helps to achieve a good user interface and platform independence. Using the Wikipedia and Wiktionary as the reference works on languages and grammar helps ensure good quality instructions for the exercises.
Internationalization. Many language students have not (yet) mastered the English language. By making the software available in many languages, a broad user base can be reached.
Support for exercises in many languages. The language that is studied is usually not the same as the display language.
An easy interface for creating new exercises. It should be possible to create new types of exercises (or the same exercises but for new languages) using no or minimal programming skills.
An easy procedure for including new exercises in the official distribution of the software. This will require project members with skills in many languages to ensure the quality of user-submitted exercise before they are submitted.