QWERGY layout (not a typo)

[krazyderek]

Short story: i swapped 7 keys on qwerty to make QWERGY, and it only affects three fingers.


Long story:
After spending the time to learn DVORAK and ramp up to a blistering 11wpm, i've decided i don't like it. Reaching for the I and D on the home row (index finger reaching) was particularly disappointing.

Doing some reading about colemak, workman, miniman, norman, i didn't really find what i wanted, an easy fix to qwerty so it wouldn't take me 6 months to get back up to speed. With QWERTY i mostly disliked reaching for T, H, and N, again on the index fingers. So i stared at the "blue map" on http://www.workmanlayout.com/blog/ wondering if there was a simpler way to solve my particular concerns. It was initially QWERFY, but the first time i went to do CMD+F (or CTRL+F) i thought G should join the party.

Has this been done before? Upsides, downsides?
Constructive criticism welcomed.

[Oobly]

That's not bad. A good improvement in efficiency over QWERTY with minimal changes. I like it. Unfortunately it shifts characters between rows that doesn't match eny existing layout, so unless you go for "flat" profile keycaps (or stickers / decals of some sort) you're going to have trouble trying to get keycaps with the legends in the right places to fit.

[krazyderek]

especially on a kinesis contour with its blue home row keys (keys is harder to type now).

I modified the right hand slightly since i found the i->n and n->i combination a bit jumpy, putting n on the index finger fixed that, but words like knife and knowledge are still less than ideal

[Oobly]

especially on a kinesis contour with its blue home row keys (keys is harder to type now).

I modified the right hand slightly since i found the i->n and n->i combination a bit jumpy, putting n on the index finger fixed that, but words like knife and knowledge are still less than ideal

And right here is where you start to discover that designing a character layout is HARD. A small change in one area can completely change the typing feel, it's hard to fix the things that bug you without causing other things that bug you.

I stick with QWERTY on normal staggered boards and use a VERY different layout on my split ergo board. Keeps two separate muscle memory sets that don't interfere with each other.

If you move your whole arm while typing with QWERTY (floating your hands above the board with wrists straight, so you use more muscle groups and smaller movements per group), it's actually not THAT bad. Changing the physical layout results in bigger improvements in comfort and typing effort.