Compare user keypresses with code sent.

This feature compares the text in the Code sent and User Keypresses windows. It is great for showing you how well you are doing in a code practice session. The windows do not have to be open for this feature to work. The comparison is "live". It changes dynamically as NuMorse Professional sends text and you type keypresses.

You might be surprised to know that comparing two pieces of text is quite complex. Surely it is possible to simply check which characters match? Well, here is an example to show that things are not so simple:

Code sent:

THE CAT SAT ON THE MAT

You typed

HE CAT SAT ON THE MAT

Perhaps you missed the first character because you weren't quite ready when the code started. Using simple character matching would give you a score of 0% correct. No characters match place for place. This is a harsh comparison, after all you made just one mistake. There are other possible complexities, such as missing spaces, extra characters typed in error and so on. NuMorse Professional offers two alternatives to work around these problems. They both have advantages and shortcomings depending on the type of mismatches that occur.

Method 1

Based on the Levenshtein string distance; a similarity index defined as the minimum number of single character edits (insert/delete/replace) necessary to transform one block of text into the other.

Method 2

The Ratcliff/Obershelp pattern matching method.  Conducts an exhaustive examination of the two blocks of text and returns a percentage representing their similarity.

Experiment with the two methods and see which one gives results closest to those you would expect. Both methods are restricted to comparing the first 1000 characters of the text and are more accurate at less than 255 characters.