Try this one http://patorjk.com/keyboard-layout-analyzer/

in terms of comfort first and speed second. My only requirement is that ZXC remain where they are. A would be nice too but i'm guessing it's so commonly used that any decent layout will move it away from the pinkies...

Check this website out also.

http://mkweb.bcgsc.ca/carpalx/?full_optimization
http://mkweb.bcgsc.ca/carpalx/?colemak

Depends on what you find comfortable. Colemak avoids the upper and bottom row like the plague and I personally think that's a mistake.

Care to elaborate?

I've always wondered about ideal layouts for non-touch-typists.  I type with two fingers, about 60 words per minute, on QWERTY.  I doubt the same math applies for hand movements and home row keys-- maybe clustering in a starburst shape would be faster for such typing?

I know much people on the web claiming that their speed on qwerty reach 100+wpm. That is 500+ char per mins, 8 keystrokes per second.

I confess that i am not a good 100+wpm typist who "constantly" hitting 8 keystrokes per second precisely. In fact, it is rather obscure to claim a speed without a common measurement. Is it the max speed or an average speed? How long should I take average? 1 minute or 1 hr?

I did not found one superfast typist who has break the record set by Babara Blackburn whose talent must be born rather than designed by keyboard.

If you are an average typist like me, you won't become a 100+wpm typist by switching to Dvorak, Colemak, or any "optimized" layout. Your speed of converting a brain signal into a keystroke is highly constrained by genes just like those sport athlete who cannot get much more faster by changing sports shoes(well it may help a little but won't get you becoming superman, right?)

Why I still keep my Dvorak skill if it did not make me a superfast typist?

I believe that Dvorak did make much more sense in terms of categorisation. I enjoy the hand alternation and grouping of vowels and high frequency consonants at the "home position", evenly on left and right. The effort saved and speed gaind on the design is minimal. You won't get from 50wpm to 100wpm by such changes. However, if we add up the effort we could save for next decades, it would be an enormouse amount!

Hit me. Is it colemak, dvorak (guessing no), maltron, or one of those really rare ones? I can't seem to find those websites that compare the stats of different layouts

Which "stats" are you referring to?

Are you considering just typing text, or programming, or gaming, or calculations or combinations thereof?

For my money, speaking solely of entering text, if you're looking purely at the "layout", you have to compare only those factors which are not "human related".  eg whether it's "comfortable", can one get a decent "rhythm", whether one can type accurately, quickly, whether one gets sore shoulders.  They're all related, I would submit, to individual variations of people, and should not be considered, at least in a first approximation.

Measures such as distance traveled by the hands/fingers over the course of keying (say) 10,000 words, what distance is traveled keying "common" digraphs and trigraphs (common in English I suppose), what percentage of typing requires moving from the home row to another, what percentage of keying requires a "hurdle" ie from the top row to the bottom row or vice versa
would probably be more valid indicators of a layout's "efficiency".

As a starting point (note that) I'd submit that the number of different words which can be typed with minimal travel, ie without moving away from the "home row" would be the way to go.  

It's a very simple calculation, very accurate (providing all parties start out with the same word list(s)), and as long as one ignores individual perceptions of whether words are commonly used (this varies with occupation, country etc) pretty well indisputable.

http://www.maltron.com/keyboard-info/word-lists/word-lists-maltron-layout.html

http://www.maltron.com/keyboard-info/word-lists/word-lists-qwerty-layout.html


The above links give a fairly detailed comparison of QWERTY against Maltron.  Perhaps somebody might like to continue the analysis with Dvorak and Colemak.

This link (which I also placed in another post) has some fairly detailed academic papers which make interesting reading, and as far as I'm able to find, there are not equivalents for the other layouts. (It should be noted that the Lillian Malt papers indicate that she actually used Dvorak in her study, as well as QWERTY and Maltron.)

http://www.maltron.com/keyboard-info/academic-papers.html

Joe