I already described a lot about my motivations to try-out different keyboard prototypes and also layouts in my DIY thread over at deskthority, but since I've been thinking about documenting especially my experiences with the layouts anyways I guess your question is a good way to get started.
In short: Get the AHK-driver for the neo layout at
www.neo-layout.org to be able to use their layer 3 & 4 with any layout, and if you're brave invest in ergonomic alternatives!
As I am a software developer I pondered learning a new layout first about 3 years ago - and soon stumbled upon neo-layout.org, which you already mentioned. What I did not realize was it was indeed optimized for German and thus not really perfect for my daily tasks of coding and documenting in English. Still, it was a real improvement, and especially the extra layers
are a programmers dream as they put all extra characters often needed at sane positions.
I'm quoting my personal setups below which are optimized for my split 4x5 rows/columns setup per hand, the 4th row being for thumbs only - but you'll get the idea:
The slighty modified layer 3 (or Mod3 in neo):
@ € [ ] # ! < > = &
\ ° { } * ? ( ) +
$ | ~ ` ^ % " 'As you'll notice, all pairs of brackets are conveviently located beneath index and middle finger on home- and top-row, and all other symbols well accessible.
The 4th layer (Mod4) features all navigational keys on the left and numpad right:
⇞ ⇤ ↑ ⇥ ⇟ ß 7 8 9 ä ⇤,⇥ : backspace & delete
⇤ ← ↓ → ⇥ . 4 5 6 ö
e ⇥ i ⏎ 0 1 2 3 ü e,i : esc & insertThese two layers alone make programming that much easier, and since they are readily available as either driver or AHK-script from the neo page. And as the AHK-version doesn't need admin permissions and features a switchable base layout you can even stay with QWERTY and still use them!
If you really want to get the typing experience, however, I would recommend learning a more ergonomic layout. I have been through this a couple of times in the last 2 years: First neo, but then switched over to the (now obsolete) NordTast and its successor,
AdNW, and just this week to its modification for matrix/non-staggered/symmetric keyboards like the TrulyErgonomic or 7bits HyperMini. And while the first weeks are really hard, it gets better fairly fast if you decide to switch over completely. The gain can not be overestimated, and I'm not just talking about speed or accuracy here, which might be depressing for quite a while depending on your current capabilities - what is most amazing is the smoothness and ease which is achieved by the change. And from personal experience I noticed that I can still type nearly as fast as before on a Qwertz keyboard after a little re-adjustment - the muscle memory still seems to be there, maybe also easier for me due to having custom keyboards with AdNW and thus directly feeling the physical difference to the standard office keyboards.
A little history about the development of these layouts, because currently most information is either lost (nordtast.org) or still only available in German (adnw.de) - mostly from my lurking on the mailinglist at googlegroups, so excuse any incorrect descriptions. I'll see whether a documentation in English could be retrieved/created in the future, as this seems valuable information to a broader audience.
NordTast was started by some interested people that were mainly unhappy with neo's optimizations focusing mainly on German only at that time, and the unwillingness to change the 'official' neo which was very understandable considering it had just been accepted as a preset layout in most linux distros. After several attempts of finding a layout that would be more ergonomic to type on several metrics emerged as being important (but still often questioned in alternatives that were tried out):
- Positions of the individual letters: Often used ones should be on the home-row, with separate weights for all positions
- Collisions should be minimized: The same finger should not need to be used in succession (nor its neighbour sometimes)
- Hand switches should be maximized
- Better distribution of keys on both hands and all fingers
- Inward rolls of the fingers preferred
- and many more ...
Looking at Dvoraks scientific paper, many if not most of these requirements were already identified by him in 1932, and lead to his well known layout. With the help of an Optimizer developed by a member on the list new layouts were than generated and evaluated by these metrics, taking into account Bi- and Trigrammes for both English and German. One interesting result was that Dvorak had indeed developed a very clever layout for English all by hand even under careful computerized inspection, with Colemak being slightly better but much more so in German and similar languages. Malt, IIRC, has a different take on some of these metrics, focusing more on similarity than hand switching, but I know too little about that.
Another observation was made trying Dvorak and optimized layouts, however, by some keen folks at NordTast at the time: The pure numerical metrics can not capture nor describe the specific feel or smoothness of a layout, and it was mentioned that Dvorak had also succeeded in that regard. Many opimizations were evaluated, and tiny manual adjustments finally lead to the two main layouts that are mentioned above and have been 'stable' for about a year now, with its main contributors seeing little to gain with future changes under similar premises (from time to time, there are new ideas being tried, like letter similarity a la Malt, but that no real contender has emerged is a sign of the maturity of the layout). For completeness, however, it should be noted that the original neo is also undergoing further refinements, but since I don't follow that line anymore I know not much about their metrics and latest ideas).
So here they finally are as I use them personally, mainly banning umlauts in favour of more often used slash and dash and exchanging a few bits due to my minimized hardware :
AdNW for normal keyboards:
K U Q . J V G C L F
H I E A O D T R N S
X Y - , / B P W M ZBU-Teck for matrix layouts, also altered
B U Q . X P C L M F
H I E A O D T R N S
K Y - , / J G W V ZFrom all I've read they beat Dvorak and Colemak in every aspect mentioned above, but with the latter being supported natively on most OS that makes switching without custom hardware or the willingness to install necessary drivers on every computer used harder. And to be honest, I don't want to advocate either over the other too much, in any case they are all a definite improvement over the standard qwerty. I can only recommend to try these out, however, as the feeling is really hard to explain.
Some of the metrics can be seen on the online analyzer
http://patorjk.com/keyboard-layout-analyzer/, a quick check confirmed above claims, although the metrics are differently weighted or missing, but you'll get the idea that the layouts don't suck from another source ...
Too bad the original site has moved and its new home still does not have all assembled informations, and if so only in English - especially the
graphic representations of the different layouts are really worth analyzing. Maybe if I find the time and interest I'll try to draft a better summary.
Hopefully this was not too boring, I just could not stop practising BU-Teck :-)
