Jovelearn

Jovelearn.com is a website linking tutors with those needing instruction. Jovelyst is used to develop the dual user tutor/student Android apps and remote (web-based) whiteboard. Jovelearn takes a cut of 10 percent of fees charged by tutors, and the lesson-writers get 5 percent. Monospace/Rich-Text Modes (see below) are used to format text.

Subjects

Jovelearn subjects include math, science, literacy, and computers. Levels of difficulty range from grade school to university undergraduate level. If the student is under 18 and meets with the tutor in the student's home, a parent must be in the room or nearby.

Monospace Mode

In monospace mode, all body text rendered to the screens of Jovelearn end-users is in a mono-spaced, typewriter-style font. Every character takes up 2 square cells: an upper cell and a lower cell. Superscripts and subscripts are handled by employing a vertical offset of one square cell. Header text is also mono-spaced, and each character takes up 2 oversized square cells.

Additional Formatting

The grid of characters can be subdivided into panels, which can themselves be subdivided into more panels, and so on. Any panel can contain zero or more text boxes, which may overlap each other. Vertical grid lines each take up one square cell per row of square cells. Horizontal grid lines are displayed in the same pixel row as underscore characters. Any row of square cells containing a horizontal grid line which is 2 pixels wide is taller by exactly one pixel. The following bracket characters: ( ) [ ] { } can be oriented vertically or horizontally, taking up a single column or row of at least 2 square cells, respectively. Widgets such as check boxes, radio buttons, and combo box arrows take up 4 square cells (2 by 2). Images, animations, and diagrams are contained in canvas objects, which can appear anywhere panels can appear.

Rich-Text Mode

In rich-text mode, a given header or paragraph of body text can consist of a single variable-width font. Paragraphs have before/after spacing, left/right indent, and line spacing (single, double, 1.5, etc.). Panels have margins on all 4 sides. Beginner app-writers start off with monospace mode, and then advance to rich-text mode. In both rich-text and monospace (web-based) modes, text is rendered to the HTML5 canvas object. Some features like form fields and submit buttons use normal HTML.

Windows Client

The Windows Client enables the tutor to control a red pointer on the student's Windows screen (equipped with Bluetooth) using the tutor's Android device. Instructions appear in always-on-top windows on the Windows screen as well as on the Android device. This setup facilitates mastery of Windows applications such as MS Office.

Jovelyst Integration

Jovelyst on the Windows Client displays text/graphics in the always-on-top windows. Jovelyst on the Android device displays text/graphics and enables the tutor to interact with the lesson player and control the red pointer on the Windows screen.

Lesson Player

• Default background color: white
• Default color of content text: black
• Color of tutor text: gray
• Color of student text: blue
• Page Up/Down: scroll a page at a time
• Ctrl+Home/End: top/bottom
• F6: toggle user
• Click: move text cursor, display red mouse pointer on the other user's screen
• Arrow key: move text cursor
• Letter, digit, symbol, space: insert char.
• Insert: toggle insert/overwrite mode
• Underscore: toggle underline of current char. and move right
• Vertical slash: toggle vertical grid line at cursor and move down
• Ctrl+vertical slash: insert vertical slash char.
• Home/End: beginning/end of line
• Enter: append blank line, cursor backs up to line up with beginning of word to left of original cursor position on previous non-blank line
• Backspace (on blank line): cursor backs up to line up with beginning of previous word on previous non-blank line (unindent one word at a time)
• Delete: delete/clear highlighted block (depends on insert/overwrite mode)
• Shift+Arrow: highlight multi-line block if up/down and nothing already highlighted, else highlight rectangular block
• F1: show/hide menu (Ctrl+Letters)
• Ctrl+(Z, X, C, V, Y, B, I, U, J, O, N, F, R, H, G, K, Q, S, P, T, F1): undo, cut, copy, paste, redo, bold, italics, underline, justify, overwrite toggle, notes/content view toggle, find, search/replace, heading, graphic, hyperlink, special char., shade/borders, panel/text box, table, help screen
• Ctrl+J: justify, use arrow keys: Up = cancel, Down = center
• Ctrl+Up/Down Arrow: superscript/subscript
• Ctrl+Left/Right Arrow: move left/right word at a time
• Parenthesis/square bracket/brace bracket: insert oversize open/close bracket if:
  • a narrow block of text is highlighted (one square cell by at least 3 square cells)
• Else if a wider block of text is highlighted (at least 3 cells tall and 2 cells wide):
  • enclose highlighted block in oversize open/close brackets
• Quiz mode:
  • Similar to content view
  • All lines containing lesson text (usually black text) are read-only
  • User presses Enter to insert a blank line
  • User presses Enter to split line containing user text (blue) into 2 separate lines
• Play Lesson:
  • Navigation buttons in a row at top left (content view)
  • Start Icon: Access file commands:
    • Open, Close, New, Save, Save As, Print, Exit
  • [ | < ] : Beginning
  • [ > | ] : End
  • [ << ] : Previous Slide
  • [ >> ] : Next Slide
  • [ ^ ] : Beginning of Current Slide
  • [ > ] : Play
  • [ || ] : Pause
  • Space : Single-Step
  • [ < ] : Reverse Single-Step
• Chat Window
  • Enter: transmit chat entry
  • Up/Down Arrow: display previous/next chat entry of current user
  • Shift+Up/Down Arrow: display previous/next chat entry of different user
  • Left/Right Arrow: used to edit chat entry (highlight if used with Shift)
  • Ctrl+(Z, X, C, V, Y): undo, cut, copy, paste, redo
• Mac commands (optionally disabled on non-Macs):
  • Ctrl+O: same as Insert
  • Shift+Ctrl+E: same as Home
  • Ctrl+E: same as End
  • Delete: same as Backspace