We have looked into adding animated, or video exercises into WorkPace. However, we have decided, for the present, not to use this form of exercise presentation. There are a number of reasons for this.

1. They hugely increase the disk space, memory, and CPU requirements - good quality video exercises would take up approximately another 20 MB of disk space, plus considerable run-time overheads. The colour and CPU requirements mean that low spec computers would have problems displaying the exercises. These issues are of significant importance to technical personnel who to wish to rollout WorkPace to large numbers of computers in their organisation.
2. Such animation is normally quite 'jerky' and does not properly convey the need for smooth, flowing movements when doing exercises.
3. Many of the 'exercises' WorkPace uses are stretches - they do not involve continuous movement.
4. Animated exercises do not allow for users individual variations in the speed of their movements. With animated exercises users tend to try and follow the exact movements and speed as it is displayed, rather than choosing a pace that suits them.

WorkPace tries to detect natural pauses and breaks in your work and thus avoid warning you unnecessarily. This is intended to help reduce the level of disruption of your work by WorkPace which many people can find irritating. For a micropause to be effective you must relax your muscles to allow restoration of blood flow and reduction of fatigue build up. This normally means letting go of the mouse or taking your hands away from the computer keyboard and dropping them at your sides, or in your lap to relax. Hopefully, when WorkPace prompts you to take a micro-pause this is what you to. However, many people can stop actively typing or moving the mouse for a while whilst thinking or reading something on screen. In this case WorkPace may assume that you have taken a micropause when it fact you have not actually relaxed your arm and hand muscles properly. Unfortunately, WorkPace cannot see whether you are actually taking a proper micropause.

In order to help compensate for this a natural micropause (in the default settings) must be 1.5x longer (150%) than your chosen micropause duration before it is counted as a real micropause. For example, if your micropause duration is 10 secs then the micropause counter will only reset after 15 secs of no keyboard or mouse activity.

If you find that the micropause counter is still resetting too often and you are not getting enough micropauses you can do two things:

1. Increase the micro-pause duration: This means that micropauses will be longer, and thus the reset period will also be longer. To adjust choose Edit/Break Timing on the WorkPace main menu and increase the micropause duration.

2. Change the micropause reset percentage: There is a special file called sysop.val in the WorkPace/system directory on your computer. Load this file into a text editor and under both [Micro-pause] and [Micropause] change the parameter l resetp=150 to a higher value. For example, you could change it to l resetp=400 meaning that natural micropauses would only be counted if they were 4x (400%) longer than the micropause duration. The higher that this value is set the less likely the micropause counter is to reset.

Whenever a higher level break is due soon any lower-level breaks that are coming up are suspended. This is designed to avoid too much disruption of your work by giving you a micro-pause immediately followed by rest break, or a rest break immediately followed by your daily limit warning. When you ignore a daily limit warning the daily limit is then extended by an amount relative to the size of your daily limit -- normally about 30 minutes to 1 hr. The problem is that if a rest break is due but your daily limit is about to be displayed again shortly then WorkPace will decide to reset the rest break counter and wait to instead give you a daily limit message. However, if you then ignore the daily limit then WorkPace's assumption that you are about to take a huge long rest break i.e. are finishing work is now incorrect. In later versions we will be looking at improving some of these aspects of the logic to ensure that even if you ignore daily limit warnings you will still get a rest breaks. In the meantime you can still take a rest break (even if it has been reset) simply by pressing the rest break button on the status window.

Computer usage time is counted as any time in which there was mouse or keyboard activity within the last 30 seconds.

Mouse usage is counted as any time in which there was a mouse click or mouse movement within the last 2 seconds.

Note that keyboard usage does not simply equal computer usage - mouse usage

Why? Firstly, computer usage is counted on a different time basis to mouse usage (or keyboard usage). Secondly, it is possible to be using both the keyboard and the mouse at once, especially if the overlapping the run on times described above are taken into account.

Effectively the measurement of computer usage takes into account both 'active' and 'passive' usage, whereas mouse usage only measures 'active' use of the mouse. At present WorkPace does not separately record 'active' keyboard usage, although this should be introduced in the future.

Calculating your actual time using the computer -- i.e. the keyboard or mouse is not quite as straightforward as might first appear.

Firstly why are we trying to measure usage? As far as WorkPace is concerned the major risk factors for RSI/OOS problems from computers are muscle tension and constrained posture, not so much just the actions of typing, clicking, and moving the mouse. Most of us are not high-speed copy typists and us it is not the number of keystrokes or mouse clicks which is the main risk factor. As far as muscle tension goes it is possible to maintain undesirable levels of muscle tension without even typing or moving the mouse (i.e. 'passive' computer usage). Try sitting in your chair and either holding your arms over the keyboard, or gripping the mouse tightly and then not moving from this position for 30 minutes. At the end of this period I can guarantee that you will be feeling uncomfortable, with some level of discomfort even though you may not have typed a single keystroke, or moved the mouse a millimetre.

Consequently, as far as risk factors go we are more interested in the time you spend at the computer without getting up for a break or changing your posture, or how long you spend gripping the mouse.

The second issue is if usage is measured as simply the time you spend actually typing or mouse clicking (i.e. 'active' usage) then what do we actually measure -- simply the time it takes to press the keys? One might say that the time it takes to click or press a key is almost instantaneous. For example, if you were to do two keystrokes every second for 30 minutes how long have you been using the keyboard? In reality the time taken to press and release each key is only about 1/5 of a second or less. Does this mean that you have actually used the keyboard for less than 12 mins? Certainly as far as we are concerned you were using the keyboard for the entire of that 30 minutes.

There is unfortunately no known defined and agreed-upon way to measure computer usage. Accordingly WorkPace uses a set of rules based upon an appraisal of the true risk factors in use your computer, as were explained above.

WorkPace does not record 'mouse distance/travel' because we believe that mouse travel is a meaningless statistic, for several reasons.

At present there is no version of WorkPace available for the Macintosh. Unfortunately, despite some interest from Macintosh users we have not been able to set aside the resources for porting WorkPace to the Macintosh. However, it is a possibility that we are keeping open up for the future. In the meantime, our apologies to all Macintosh users.

At present there is no version of WorkPace available for Unix. However, it is definitely something we are looking into. As with producing a Macintosh version it is a matter of being able to invest company resources in parallel development for multiple platforms. There is no timetable set for this development yet. However if you have a strong interest in seeing a Unix version of WorkPace available please contact Niche Software to register your interest - the more interest we have the higher the priority we can place on producing such a version.

Yes. A simplified version of WorkPace is available for DOS (it provides warnings for micropauses and rest breaks but omits some of the more advanced features of the Windows versions).

The DOS version can be downloaded by itself or as part of the Windows versions of WorkPace (it is bundled free with these versions). WorkPace for DOS is particularly useful if you open DOS windows or run DOS programs under Windows 3.1, 95 or 98. Under these versions of Windows WorkPace is unable to monitor your keyboard and mouse usage when you are using DOS. Instead, you can use WorkPace for DOS to ensure that you will still be reminded to take micropauses and rest breaks.

Yes! (and no). The standard version of WorkPace is designed to support both standalone and network installation. Network installation facilities include:

• Centralised access to user setup information and recorded usage statistics
• Automatically individualised setups based on the login name of each user
• Ability to create an automatic install for rollout to multiple computers on a network

Currently, if you use speech recognition software (such as Dragon NaturallySpeaking) WorkPace cannot distinguish keystrokes entered by voice from those entered using the keyboard. This is a problem we are certainly aware of (one of the developers of the software, Kevin Taylor, uses speech recognition himself).

Unfortunately, although we have investigated it in some detail we have not yet found a reliable way to filter speech recognition activity as yet. Basically, speech recognition software emulates keyboard activity directly i.e. they generate Windows keystroke events, and they do not do it in such a way as to allow us to discriminate properly. To date we have not found a good way to distinguish between keystrokes from speech recognition and those from the keyboard.

However, it is something that we actively investigating - speech recognition is a tool that is becoming increasingly common. Ideally we would like WorkPace to be able to monitor speech recognition use as a separate parameter and perhaps provide users with hints about speech recognition and when to take breaks from dictation, which can be just as important as taking breaks from keyboarding (have you heard about voice RSI?...)

In many ways micropauses and rest breaks are just as appropriate to speech recognition use as they are to keyboard and mouse usage.

Yes, you can certainly use WorkPace on several computers at once, but WorkPace will not be able to simultaneously monitor what you are doing on both computers. You will effectively have two different setups and be seen as two separate users meaning that micropauses and rest breaks will occur independently on each computer. When a rest break occurs on one computer it is not possible to have WorkPace simultaneously generate a rest break on the second computer.

Note that if both of these computers share the same user file (as can occur when WorkPace user files are stored in a central network directory and the same person is logged onto two different computers at the same time) then WorkPace may behave unpredictably. Specifically both copies of WorkPace will be writing to the same user file and may thus overwrite each other's information. As a result recent changes to your user setup may not get saved, and some of your usage statistics may not get recorded.

Versions Affected: WorkPace 2.4 to 2.4c

Status: Corrected in versions 2.4d onwards

This error is due to a failure in loading the dll responsible for animating the exercises and causes WorkPace to terminate with the error "Error 48: Error in loading DLL". This error message window may not be visible due to it appearing behind the Exercise window. This error will occur if the computer does not have the file "msvcrt.dll" in the "windows\system" directory.

Solution

When this error occurs, the user will find that the computer is 'locked up.' It can be unlocked by pressing CTRL-ALT-DEL simultaneously (which brings up the "Task/Program Manager"), selecting "sv32_240" and pressing "End Task". To prevent further future lockups, the user should disable the exercise windows by selecting Edit/Exercises from the main menu, or the popup menu, and unselecting the option "display exercises during restbreak." Downloading the latest version of WorkPace will solve this problem completely.

Versions Affected: WorkPace 2.4b

Status: Corrected in versions 2.4c onwards

If WorkPace 2.4b is installed over the 16-bit version of WorkPace in a directory other than the default directory i.e. c:\Program Files\WorkPace, the old user files are deleted. This only occurs if the user selects to install WorkPace 2.4b into the same directory as their previous 16-bit version. This typically will only occur in the stand-alone installation.

Solution

Install WorkPace 2.4b in a directory different from the 16-bit version. This is not necessary if it is installed in the default directory, i.e. c:\Program Files\WorkPace. The previous user files may need to be copied to the \WorkPace\user directory.

Versions Affected: WorkPace 2.4 to 2.4b

Status: Corrected in versions 2.4c onwards

This occurs if the amount of free disk space is greater than 2 Gigabytes, but less than 4 Gigabytes. This is due to a bug in the Windows API. The installation procedure may fail.

Solution

Install WorkPace to a drive with less than 2 GB of space, or download the latest version of WorkPace.

Versions Affected: WorkPace 2.4 and onwards under Windows 95

Status: Can be solved by a special library update

This error occurs when the user selects an item from the Edit menu on the WorkPace main menu, or on the system tray popup menu. It occurs on machines that run an early version of Windows 95 and is due to an incompatibility between a Microsoft library that WorkPace uses and Windows itself.

Solution

Versions Affected: WorkPace 2.4 to 2.4b

Status: Corrected in versions 2.4c onwards

This error can occur in the installation program when changing the destination drive for a component by using the browse button. The install program will terminate when this error occurs.

Solution

Type the destination path directly into the destination box, rather than using the browse button.

Versions Affected: WorkPace 2.4, WorkPace Reports 1.4

Status: Corrected in versions 2.4a onwards

This error occurs when WorkPace or WorkPace Reports is run on an older version of Windows 95 (ver 4.00.950). Both programs will abort and fail. This version of Windows is typically on older 75 MHz Pentium machines.

Solution

Upgrade to Windows 95 version 4.00.950 B, Windows NT 4.0, or Windows 98. Or download the current version of WorkPace.

Versions Affected: WorkPace 2.4

Status: Corrected in versions 2.4a onwards

This error occurs if the local hard drive is out of space. The cancel button with this error does not work.

Solution

Press the Alt-Tab key to switch tasks to Windows Explorer. Make more room on the disk by emptying the recycling bin, or deleting files. Switch back to the WorkPace install program and press OK.

Versions Affected: WorkPace 2.4

Status: Corrected in versions 2.4a onwards

This error can occur during installation after inserting disk-2 and pressing OK. It happens only if the user clicks on the blue background screen while the message "Copying disk 2...." Is on the screen.

Solution

Do not click on the blue background screen of the installation program during the message "Copying disk 2...". Use the keyboard if necessary.

Versions Affected: WorkPace 2.4

Status: Corrected in versions 2.4a onwards

This error can occur when typing in a Registration Key into the installation program, and only occurs if the key is out of date and no longer valid.

Solution

Obtain a new valid Registration Key.

Versions Affected: WorkPace 2.4

Status: Corrected in versions 2.4a onwards

This error occurs during an Auto-install when using Network install options 2, 3 or 4.

Solution

If you wish to use the Auto-install feature then use Network install option 1 (central directory).

Versions Affected: WorkPace 2.4 onwards

Status: Not yet corrected

This error occurs during the installation of WorkPace. It is caused by installing WorkPace into the same directory as where the installation files are located. For example this can happen when the downloaded .zip file is unzipped into c:\workpace and then c:\workpace is selected as the destination directory during installation.

Solution

The solution is to install WorkPace using a different destination path to where the installation files are located, e.g. if you unzipped the downloaded .zip file into C:\WorkPace then select a different directory to install WorkPace into such as c:\program files\WorkPace.

Versions Affected: WorkPace 2.5

Status: Not yet corrected

This error occurs immediately upon running WorkPace. It is caused by a bug in the development environment related to the reading of text files. If the path of the text file has a part consisting of an 8-character word followed by a space and followed by another word then reading this text file fails. For example choosing the path c:\internet downloads\WorkPace will cause this problem because the part of the path 'internet downloads' has an 8 character word followed by a space and another word.

Solution

The solution is to re-install WorkPace using a different destination path, e.g. C:\program files\WorkPace, or any path that is not of the form described above.

In the WorkPace/system directory on your computer there is a special file called sysop.val . This contains a range of special settings that determine how WorkPace operates. Some of the settings are listed below. Note that if you change any settings for the micropause or rest break you will need to change them under two headings (this is an oversight in the current code).

Warning: The sysop.val is a system level file for WorkPace and consequently is not provided with full error or argument checking. Editing this file should be done carefully as unusual values may cause WorkPace to operate incorrectly, and corruption of the formatting of the file could cause WorkPace to crash.

Most of the parameters are time values in micro-seconds (i.e. 5000 = 5 secs), with others being percentages.

The parameters of most interest are:

Parameter

Units

Description

l stop

1/1000s sec

Stop interval - time after which appropriate timer will stop counting if there has been no further keyboard/mouse activity e.g. for micropause l stop= 5000 => timer will stop counting after 5 seconds of no activity

l resetp

%

Timer reset interval as a percentage of break duration e.g. for Micropause l resetp = 150 => if micropause duration is set to 10 secs then micropause timer will reset automatically after 150% x 10secs i.e. 15 secs of no activity

l warn dur

1/1000s sec

Pop-up warning window display duration -- the time the pop-up warning is displayed, changing colour, before your work is interrupted i.e. before the break is insisted.

l vol break

1/1000s sec

When a break pop-up is displayed warning you about a break you should take, WorkPace will monitor your activity. If there is no activity for a while (the vol break) WorkPace will decide that you have voluntarily taken the break that the pop-up is warning you about. The micropause break window, or rest break window will then automatically appear.

l warn intp

%

Time between re-warning, as a percentage of the break interval. e.g. for Rest break l warn intp = 10 => the next pop-up warning (up to the limit specified in the Warning Configuration) will occur 10% of the Rest break interval later. If the Rest break interval is 60 minutes, re-warnings will thus appear 6 minutes after the previous warning.

l extendp

%

l isp av period

1/1000s sec

The period over which the instantaneous typing speed bar displayed in the status window is calculated.

l av spd gap

1/1000s sec

The largest time between keystrokes which will be counted as continuous typing. This is used in calculating the average typing speed