Author Topic: Yet another keyboard layout: eNNe  (Read 48799 times)

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Offline Sc0tTy

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Yet another keyboard layout: eNNe
« on: Fri, 21 July 2017, 19:52:38 »
Updated:
By now Ian and me have made a lot of changes to the layout and word lists which resulted in big advances :)
I will be keeping this opening post unchanged but the name BoeKoe is no more, its now eNNe.

Enjoy the discussion :)

Original post:
Hi there,

So yes, this is yet another keyboard layout... And with all layouts, this one fills some specific needs (and comes great responsibility).
In particular this layout is to be used on an ErgoDox keyboard.
The layout I will be introducing shortly is developed for typing English and Dutch (about 50/50 share) and programming in C#, JavaScript, LESS and HTML.

Before I start I would like to clarify some things.

Introduction
I've been typing Colemak for over 5 years and recently one of my TEK's started failing.
So I had to look for a new keyboard and a long story short I purchased a ErgoDox EZ.
One of the downsides of this keyboard is that it has fewer keys than the TEK and moved some other keys around, this forced me to rethink my layout.
Firstly what I did is modify Colemak so that it wouldn't be a problem but I also really felt the need to tweak the layout because some fingers were being overused (mainly my right index finger).
This brought me back to the same journey which resulted in me choosing in Colemak.

Firstly I started analyzing my own WhatPulse data, it contains 2.1 million keypresses.
I also know that key count is not the only thing that makes a layout good (or bad) and after doing a lot of research I decided to base my layout to Ian's X6.4H layout, I preferred it over the BEAKL layout. You can check out Ian's and Den's long conversation here: http://shenafu.com/smf/index.php?topic=89, its a very interesting read.

The X6.4H and the BEAKL layout both have one great omission: the arrow cluster.
According to my data the arrow cluster has a combined usage of over 191.000 key presses.
Which is about 8% of the total amount and therefor it must be easily accessible (specially with copy/paste and such).

I didn't like a some other things about X6.4H and so for the past few weeks I've been tweaking and tweaking and I'm finally comfortable to publish my own layout to the world to get some feedback.
For this first version I only wanted to move around the keys and not assign any extra layer to them, that will be my second step. That step will including assigning F-Keys, moving numbers and punctuations to another layer and assigning keyboard shortcuts to be used while developing and such stuff.

Another step I want to take is to move the modifier keys to the home row with the EZ's "Spacecadet" functionality :) So please don't worry about Shift/Ctrl/AltGr placement.

BoeKoe
Introducing the BoeKoe layout:
173922-0
For you non-Dutchies, we have the saying "Boe zegt de Koe" which is a kind of children's saying and translates to "A cow says moo". I found it fitting with the Boe and Koe trigrams being painful to type on this layout. A cow also usually has only two colors and this layout tries to cater to both Dutch and English.

These are its design guidelines:
  • Comfortable for both English, Dutch and programming
  • Arrow cluster must be on the right hand primary layer. They will also be included in load count for each finger
  • Outer index columns must be as light as possible
  • Right index finder load must be reduced significantly, because of significant usage with mouse/tablet and arrow cluster
  • Right thumb load must not be high, because of significant usage with mouse/tablet
  • Middle finger is touch and can handle load

This is the Flipped version which I will be using for testing on the Keyboard Layout Analyzer forks.
173920-1
Flipping the layout shouldn't impact the layout performance in the KLA tests but it does significantly anyway.
The flipped layout also makes it a little easier to switch from Colemak, especially as I switched the T and S keys already.

I also used the following weight, which I derived from info here: https://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=82183.0
173903-2

According to my WhatPulse data this results in the following load finger load:
173905-3

And following column load:


This is the load comparison compared with a standard Colemak layout on the ErgoDox, with the UP arrow key placed where the comma is.


For extra information, this would be the column load using Ian's X6.4H layout according to my WhatPulse data.
With the UP arrow key placed where the comma is AND the H key placed the same as the BoeKoe layout.

As you can see this has a significantly bigger load on the index fingers.
The original X6.4H layout has the H key placed where with the Spacebar, which imho is a really bad choise as the Spacebar is by far the most used key (not counting the E key).

Wordlist
Attached you will find the word list I used for generating this layout.
It includes Ian's following word lists: Most used words exploded, Bigram and Trigram.
And includes a top 50000 Dutch words exploded: but only any word that has a count higher than 1000 you can find it here: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/hermitdave/FrequencyWords/master/content/2016/nl/nl_50k.txt

Scores
These are my scores on the three Keyboard Analyzer forks with the mixed word set.
Den's: http://shenafu.com/code/keyboard/Keyboard%20Layout%20Analyzer%202.html
173912-7

Ian's: http://kla.keyboard-design.com/

Wierdly I cannot get above the X6 NonGr layout. I beat it in every sub test, but my layout only loses slightly in the "Same hand and thumb use" test.
I'm unsure why that has such a high penalty though.

Patrick's: http://patorjk.com/keyboard-layout-analyzer


BoeKoe performs pretty good on full English key sets too, Alice for example, especially considering the other constraints I put on the layout:
173932-10


As a disclaimer: I have not typed a single letter on this layout, I will do so starting tomorrow :P
I wanted to get feedback before I was a week in.

Attached you will also find the two BoeKoe layouts and the two X6.4H layouts.

I look forward to any positive or negative feedback!

* X6 ErgoDox NonGr.txt (13.25 kB - downloaded 207 times.)
* X6 ErgoDox.txt (13.25 kB - downloaded 188 times.)
* BoeKoe F.txt (13.36 kB - downloaded 198 times.)
* BoeKoe.txt (13.35 kB - downloaded 213 times.)
* Wordlist en Woordenlijst.txt (281.15 kB - downloaded 552 times.)
« Last Edit: Sat, 29 July 2017, 14:07:45 by Sc0tTy »
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Offline Sc0tTy

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Re: Yet another keyboard layout: BoeKoe
« Reply #1 on: Fri, 21 July 2017, 20:29:01 »
Updated the post a couple of times with more information etc., should now be complete :)
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Offline Sc0tTy

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Re: Yet another keyboard layout: BoeKoe
« Reply #2 on: Mon, 24 July 2017, 16:14:26 »
Did some more tweaking, got it below 114 at 113.99 :)
174117-0
174110-1

Switching the R and N key will reduce it to .85 but I don't think it's actually better because the ring finger would be moving around more.

Ian told me that having the S on the index isn't the best idea. I tried moving it around but can't seem to find a spot and keep/reduce the same score.

I'm still not happy with the LSM column, but it seems to be the least-worst for now.

* BoeKoe 133.99.txt (13.36 kB - downloaded 190 times.)
« Last Edit: Mon, 24 July 2017, 16:21:32 by Sc0tTy »
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Offline iandoug

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Re: Yet another keyboard layout: BoeKoe
« Reply #3 on: Tue, 25 July 2017, 04:42:29 »
I still get vastly different results from Den original scoring vs current scoring.

Even when testing on plain Dutch (ugly duckling borrowed from http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/25580/pg25580.txt) with angle quotes replaced with normal doublequotes.

Must have a look at Den's current scoring and figure out what is producing such radical differences.

Offline Sc0tTy

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Re: Yet another keyboard layout: BoeKoe
« Reply #4 on: Tue, 25 July 2017, 05:52:29 »
Just so you know typing the letters é or è is very simple on a dutch layout: hit the back-tick or apostrophe and then hit the key.
Also using those lettters like for instance meer and méér is 99% the same word but just prolonging or shortening the pronunciation.
Therefor replacing the é with e is not a problem, though the ' and `placement should have that usage in mind.
And to be honest, I hardly ever use it. I'd say maybe once a week for één but thats it.

I ran that text on v1 and v2 but see no mayor difference for BoeKoe, so i'm not sure what you are talking about.
v1:
174174-0

v2:


Or did you mean on X6 NonGr?
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Offline iandoug

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Re: Yet another keyboard layout: BoeKoe
« Reply #5 on: Tue, 25 July 2017, 07:03:40 »
Can you please advise URLs where you ran the tests?

Thanks.

(BTW I speak Afrikaans so am kinda familiar with Dutch. But our keyboards don't have those tricks for diacritics (that I know of... but am on Linux not Windows.)
KLA has no provision of handling anything that's not specified on normal, shift, AltGr or shift-AltGr, so it just complains that the character is not found.


Offline Sc0tTy

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Re: Yet another keyboard layout: BoeKoe
« Reply #6 on: Tue, 25 July 2017, 07:43:34 »
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Offline iandoug

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Re: Yet another keyboard layout: BoeKoe
« Reply #7 on: Tue, 25 July 2017, 10:13:26 »
Okay.
The version of Seelpy 1.5 on v1 of the Den's analyzer is a bit off. I first fixed it.
Screenshots from Den1, Den2 and my local copy of Den1 attached. Used local copy because Den's Ergolinear/Matrix keymaps are a bit different to my versions.
Test input was your Dutch/English word lists. I'm not sure that it's such a good input test, but in the interests of apples vs apples I used it.

Notice the vastly different ranking for Seelpy 1.5 between Den1 and Den2.
Also note that X4 layout is on plain ANSI, not Ergo anything. Probably a bit awkward to type in real life, it belongs on an ergo layout.

Den1:


Den2:


Den1 local:


So I need to see how Den's scoring changed....


Offline Sc0tTy

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Re: Yet another keyboard layout: BoeKoe
« Reply #8 on: Tue, 25 July 2017, 13:32:50 »
Hmm very strange indeed.

Does your KLA mirror differ from Den 'v1 local' ? Or is it the same as his 'v1 online'

Yeah the wordlist is not a 100%, it doesn't match my typing entirely. The 'W' and 'Y' for instance are way higher in that wordlist than my actual usage.
But using a book was worse as those use a lot of old or unused words.

Just noticed you got 113.96 instead of 113.99 on Den's v2, thats odd isn't it?


Yesterday I would have sworn I got a 113.81 but due to a browser crash I lost it and wasn't able to reproduce it.
Might he be actively editing it ?
I know he has an account on GH, not sure if he's seen this topic thought.

Edit: nvm, found it and I'm now down to .85 :)
« Last Edit: Tue, 25 July 2017, 14:02:32 by Sc0tTy »
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Offline iandoug

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Re: Yet another keyboard layout: BoeKoe
« Reply #9 on: Tue, 25 July 2017, 14:35:04 »
Does your KLA mirror differ from Den 'v1 local' ? Or is it the same as his 'v1 online'

It should be the same (my local == my live KLA mirror ==moreOrLess== Den1 live)
I say more-or-less because I fiddled a bit with his original version ... think he presented the scores as a fraction of 1, and I scaled it up so that it would have more digits before the decimal, and some after.
Looks like he has copied that approach, there may be slight differences in how we did the rounding.

Yeah the wordlist is not a 100%, it doesn't match my typing entirely. The 'W' and 'Y' for instance are way higher in that wordlist than my actual usage.
But using a book was worse as those use a lot of old or unused words.

I had to do a Dutch setwork in High school (Karakter, it finally came to me now, could not remember this afternoon) and was trying to find it on Gutenberg without knowing the name or author... so just picked Hans Christen Andersen's Ugly Duckling as a stand-in for Alice in Wonderland... :-)

Just noticed you got 113.96 instead of 113.99 on Den's v2, thats odd isn't it?

Yes... I might have slightly different spaces or carriage returns in my input compared to what you have? Which may cause the fractional difference.

Yesterday I would have sworn I got a 113.81 but due to a browser crash I lost it and wasn't able to reproduce it.
Might he be actively editing it ?
I know he has an account on GH, not sure if he's seen this topic thought.[/s]
Edit: nvm, found it and I'm now down to .85 :)

Cool... I'll wait for you to post next version  :-)

Cheers, Ian
BTW GH seems to have a lot less activity than before? Odd. Maybe US summer holidays.

Offline Sc0tTy

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Re: Yet another keyboard layout: BoeKoe
« Reply #10 on: Tue, 25 July 2017, 15:48:15 »
Meh.. Seems 113.85 will be as low as it can go.

174207-0

174204-1

Switching L and D will make it go down to .82 but in my actual usage the D is used more then the L so that would be worse.

* 113.85.txt (13.36 kB - downloaded 185 times.)

Tried putting O and L on the right index and moving the rest to the left hand but I couldn't get it under 115 then.
« Last Edit: Tue, 25 July 2017, 15:49:51 by Sc0tTy »
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Offline iandoug

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Re: Yet another keyboard layout: BoeKoe
« Reply #11 on: Tue, 25 July 2017, 16:08:34 »
Here's something for you to aim at then :-)

Your Dutch/Eng input, Den2.
My -+T+- HT02a layout is on my kla.keyboard-design.com site.


Offline iandoug

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Re: Yet another keyboard layout: BoeKoe
« Reply #12 on: Tue, 25 July 2017, 16:17:11 »
re -+T+- HT02a, yes I know S is on the index finger.... layout is quite old and before I learned many things..

Think it still manages to work because 2 of the other letters are C and F and the others are lower-used.
S/C and S/F not such common combos as we think.

Offline Sc0tTy

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Re: Yet another keyboard layout: BoeKoe
« Reply #13 on: Tue, 25 July 2017, 16:36:54 »
Wow re -+T+- HT02a looks cool, didn't know that one. Even after switching T and H it gets a higher score.
I'll have to look in to that one! Though that I and J on the left hand is very painful in Dutch.

In Dutch 'sch' is quite common (during the WW2 it was actually used to identify Germans), so you don't want SC on the same finger too.

Quick note, after moving the Enter to the right thumb on BoeKoe, like +T+, I actually got a score of 110.62 :)
So that's where the big win seems to be.
Like my index, my thumb is overloaded as well and that's why I don't have a big % key on the right thumb on my layout.
I was thinking of putting the Enter key on the inner ErgoDox columns above the backspace, like I have on my TEK. It would mean using 4 physical keys for two actual keys and use both index and middle for both keys on both sides. It would also free a key up on my left Thumb.

I might just switch D and L, its only a .24% increase and it would make typing some bigrams easier, including 'else'. Or maybe that +T+ will inspire me :)

But for now bed time :)
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Offline Sc0tTy

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Re: Yet another keyboard layout: BoeKoe
« Reply #14 on: Wed, 26 July 2017, 16:02:39 »
Another update :)

Switched the O with A and L with D.

One thing I noticed is that the word list contains way to few enters, my real world data has more than 80k presses.
So what I did is to add two more Enters for each Enter and this is my result
174272-0

And then tried to put the Enter on a couple of places.

174281-1
108.60 is with Enter on Right Thumb next to the H, but it would make the load on the Right Thumb to high for me.

174279-2
109.84 is with Enter on the Left Index where the '.' is, it would make the load on the Index just -0.14 then what it originally was on Colemak.

BoeKoe no more ?
174277-3
110.51 is my new option. The Enter would be on the Left AND Right middle column with the Backspace. Sadly putting the Enter on the left adds 1% to the score. And KLA doesn't understand using both equally. I will also use the Enter and Backspace with both my Index and Middle fingers. So the load would be 1/4th.

Here are the same layouts on the old list.
174274-4
As you can see the +T+ wins to my 110.51 but the Thumb load in that set is way to low.

* Wordlist en Woordenlijst Triple Enter.txt (298.21 kB - downloaded 3397 times.)

I will have to think of a new name now I guess...
« Last Edit: Wed, 26 July 2017, 16:11:59 by Sc0tTy »
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Offline iandoug

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Re: Yet another keyboard layout: BoeKoe
« Reply #15 on: Wed, 26 July 2017, 16:33:54 »
Can you please post the json for the one you want me to test with?
I have already added about 5 of your layouts to the test panel... :-)

Thanks.

Yes I shall have to ponder this situation... :-)

Offline iandoug

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Re: Yet another keyboard layout: BoeKoe
« Reply #16 on: Wed, 26 July 2017, 16:55:34 »
BTW you appear to be using both thumbs on each thumb cluster.

« Last Edit: Wed, 26 July 2017, 17:06:52 by iandoug »

Offline Sc0tTy

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Re: Yet another keyboard layout: BoeKoe
« Reply #17 on: Wed, 26 July 2017, 17:00:25 »
Oh shoot, here you go:
* 110.51.txt (13.44 kB - downloaded 193 times.)
* 109.84.txt (13.36 kB - downloaded 200 times.)
* 108.60.txt (13.44 kB - downloaded 186 times.)

Yeah those outer thumb-cluster were switched on the original ErgoDox KLA layout, never got around to switch them :P

Cool! Can't wait for your next test panel update :)

I suggest you use the new 'Tripple Enter' word list btw.

I also reran Alice and Top English Exploded, been a while.
Alice
174286-3
+T+ wins by a big margin but imho Alice isn't a good real world word list

English Exploded
174288-4
All BoeKoe layouts win on here to my great surprise :)
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Offline iandoug

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Re: Yet another keyboard layout: BoeKoe
« Reply #18 on: Wed, 26 July 2017, 17:07:06 »
Also the first and third layouts are illegal for KLA because you need to press two keys at the same time with your thumb to get the shifted characters on the thumb clusters.

Offline Sc0tTy

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Re: Yet another keyboard layout: BoeKoe
« Reply #19 on: Wed, 26 July 2017, 17:39:32 »
Ah the +- and `~ ic. I'll have to rerun them tomorrow, didn't think of that. I just put them there to put them somewhere. Usage shouldn't be that high. You can put them on a random spot off the cluster, for your test.
« Last Edit: Wed, 26 July 2017, 17:42:03 by Sc0tTy »
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Offline iandoug

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Re: Yet another keyboard layout: BoeKoe
« Reply #20 on: Wed, 26 July 2017, 18:20:19 »
Den 2 scoring, your triple spaced input.

Offline Sc0tTy

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Re: Yet another keyboard layout: BoeKoe
« Reply #21 on: Thu, 27 July 2017, 02:05:41 »
:o What did you change?
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Offline iandoug

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Re: Yet another keyboard layout: BoeKoe
« Reply #22 on: Thu, 27 July 2017, 02:07:17 »
Okay played a bit more, enough for now. Your turn to improve. :-)

Scoring on Den2, first with your triple-spaced test, and then with Ugly Duckling in Dutch. (British quotes).

Don't take this personally but as suggestions for improvement: I'm not convinced that your input text is a good test... eg

1. Too much repetition. Nobody is going to type "jullie jullie jullie jullie jullie jullie jullie jullie jullie jullie jullie jullie jullie jullie jullie jullie jullie jullie jullie jullie jullie jullie jullie jullie"  in normal usage.

2. I came to realise that bigrams are actually trigrams, because there is a space between. So the idea of testing "two letters frequently typed together" becomes "two letters frequently typed together, preceded and followed by a space", which is not how words work. I've actually added no-space versions of bi/tri/quad/etc-grams to my tests, and results are different. The position of the space otherwise affects the purpose of these tests too much.

3. As previously mentioned, trying to optimise for more than one language at the same time is very difficult. Even UK/USA English is different ("ou" vs "o", and " vs ' etc). Or English and "programming", before we even get into which programming language.

4. Your input text does not have a wide range of punctuation. Not even a hyphen, question mark, exclamation or doublequote. So there's lots of things you are not evaluating.

5. That's why I tried some plain Dutch text.... :-)

Screenshots, layout and duckling attached.

Dutch is sufficiently different to Afrikaans for me to not "know" what are going to be bad combinations, so I have to rely on the tests.
« Last Edit: Thu, 27 July 2017, 02:09:45 by iandoug »

Offline Sc0tTy

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Re: Yet another keyboard layout: BoeKoe
« Reply #23 on: Thu, 27 July 2017, 02:54:17 »
I'm always up for improvement! I'm actually a software developer of Continuous Improvement Software : www.cierpa.com :P

For your Mod Ian you moved the dash, dot, back-tick and equals keys, and switched A and O back, is that correct or did I miss anything?

Okay played a bit more, enough for now. Your turn to improve. :-)

Scoring on Den2, first with your triple-spaced test, and then with Ugly Duckling in Dutch. (British quotes).

Don't take this personally but as suggestions for improvement: I'm not convinced that your input text is a good test... eg

1. Too much repetition. Nobody is going to type "jullie jullie jullie jullie jullie jullie jullie jullie jullie jullie jullie jullie jullie jullie jullie jullie jullie jullie jullie jullie jullie jullie jullie jullie"  in normal usage.
Well, its to increase the usage. Are you saying that randomizing the order of the words would change the score?
If so than I must definitely do that.


2. I came to realise that bigrams are actually trigrams, because there is a space between. So the idea of testing "two letters frequently typed together" becomes "two letters frequently typed together, preceded and followed by a space", which is not how words work. I've actually added no-space versions of bi/tri/quad/etc-grams to my tests, and results are different. The position of the space otherwise affects the purpose of these tests too much.
Hmm yeah, I'd say 90% of bigrams are part of a word and so the test must represent it. Didn't think it would change the score (except for high space usage).
I'll look into that

3. As previously mentioned, trying to optimise for more than one language at the same time is very difficult. Even UK/USA English is different ("ou" vs "o", and " vs ' etc). Or English and "programming", before we even get into which programming language.

4. Your input text does not have a wide range of punctuation. Not even a hyphen, question mark, exclamation or doublequote. So there's lots of things you are not evaluating.

5. That's why I tried some plain Dutch text.... :-)

Screenshots, layout and duckling attached.

Dutch is sufficiently different to Afrikaans for me to not "know" what are going to be bad combinations, so I have to rely on the tests.

Yeah, I have my own stats data for that, which makes some choices easier and some harder.
Here you can see the biggest use punctuations wish the lowest alphabetical keys

Other punctuation usage is even lower so I didn't even bother.
I will also be moving them to a secondary layer


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Offline iandoug

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Re: Yet another keyboard layout: BoeKoe
« Reply #24 on: Thu, 27 July 2017, 03:16:45 »
For your Mod Ian you moved the dash, dot, back-tick and equals keys, and switched A and O back, is that correct or did I miss anything?

I moved the things off the thumb clusters so that KLA would stop complaining about not being able to type some things.

On left hand side, A/O and put period under E. The A/O did not make a major difference I think.

On right hand side, rearranged home row and then some letters on bottom row. That's where the big win was.
But don't know if it will be comfortable to type, either in Dutch or English.

Offline Sc0tTy

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Re: Yet another keyboard layout: BoeKoe
« Reply #25 on: Thu, 27 July 2017, 04:06:49 »
Okay, will have a look tonight.
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Offline iandoug

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Re: Yet another keyboard layout: BoeKoe
« Reply #26 on: Thu, 27 July 2017, 13:55:25 »
Today's round.... :-)


Offline iandoug

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Re: Yet another keyboard layout: BoeKoe
« Reply #28 on: Thu, 27 July 2017, 14:32:08 »
what's this testing website called again?

Patrick's original KLA: http://patorjk.com/keyboard-layout-analyzer/#/main
My fork of Den's fork, with first revised scoring: http://kla.keyboard-design.com/#/main
Den's fork with second revised scoring (where most of above scoring comes from): http://shenafu.com/code/keyboard/Keyboard%20Layout%20Analyzer%202.html#/main

My last comparative round-up of layouts (using Den's first revised scoring):http://www.keyboard-design.com/best-keyboard-layouts.html

Hope that helps :-)

Offline Sc0tTy

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Re: Yet another keyboard layout: BoeKoe
« Reply #29 on: Thu, 27 July 2017, 16:41:24 »
Wow that 107.15 is insane, can't get under it!
Though I will probably not use it as that load on the Thumb is way to high for me.

What I don't understand is that reduce the pinky load by switching pinky and ring finger colums the score actually stays the same.
Shouldn't that be better as the pinky is not as strong as the index, plus upper pinky key is very hard to reach.


Did you see my questions about the word list earlier? I'm going to try to improve it as some letter usage is way to high or low.

Will try again tomorrow.
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Offline iandoug

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Re: Yet another keyboard layout: BoeKoe
« Reply #30 on: Thu, 27 July 2017, 16:58:49 »
What I don't understand is that reduce the pinky load by switching pinky and ring finger colums the score actually stays the same.
Shouldn't that be better as the pinky is not as strong as the index, plus upper pinky key is very hard to reach.

That sort of question you should ask Den... but it's not just which finger you use but how it relates to what came before and after.  I've seen English layouts with for example the "n" on the pinky... and "n" is 4th most common letter. I also came up with a layout where it was better to put "a" on middle finger and "e" on index, instead of the expected opposite.

Did you see my questions about the word list earlier? I'm going to try to improve it as some letter usage is way to high or low.

Yes. I have come to realize that word lists are not so good for testing keyboards layouts. The ones Patrick uses have two issues:
1. common words... yes they are common, but "and" and "the" are much more common than the bottom end of the list, but each word is only there once. Hence my "exploded common words" as an attempt to remedy this. Even still, it's only the same 200 words over and over again, with a bit of punctuation and assorted capitals.

2. word lists tend to be lower case only, and no punctuation.

3. the SAT list contains a lot of obscure words, as well as a lot of uses of certain letter combinations more frequently than normal usage.

4. Your list (eg that jullie repeated) is actually checking how the keyboard handles "e j". But is that common in Dutch? It's not common in English.

So after running lots of tests (http://www.keyboard-design.com/keyboard-tests.html) I've decided to re-split them into two categories:

1. "real world" tests, which will be (English) prose, and programs. Stuff you might actually type in real life.
2. "optimising" tests, which would have the bi/tri/quad/etc-grams (with and without spaces), number tests, word lists, etc.
3. I also have a bunch of non-English / "English-ish" tests which can be typed on standard American ANSI layout, not quite sure what to do with them. They provide interesting cross-reference as best English layouts also do well on them.

The optimising tests can be used for fine-tuning punctuation, numerals, etc. But as a test of the keyboard as a whole, not so good.




Offline iandoug

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Re: Yet another keyboard layout: BoeKoe
« Reply #31 on: Thu, 27 July 2017, 18:18:25 »
Wow that 107.15 is insane, can't get under it!

:-)


Offline Sc0tTy

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Re: Yet another keyboard layout: BoeKoe
« Reply #32 on: Fri, 28 July 2017, 02:43:07 »
Wow that 107.15 is insane, can't get under it!

:-)



Huh... I tried switching the G and W yesterday but didn't lower the score. Nice work though!
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Offline iandoug

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Re: Yet another keyboard layout: BoeKoe
« Reply #33 on: Fri, 28 July 2017, 04:33:11 »
Huh... I tried switching the G and W yesterday but didn't lower the score. Nice work though!

I played some more last night.

BTW these layouts are kinda tailored for your input text, and may not do so well on other inputs.


Offline Sc0tTy

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Re: Yet another keyboard layout: BoeKoe
« Reply #34 on: Fri, 28 July 2017, 14:48:34 »
I've started working on an updated word list.

Here are the results after removing the bigram and trigram sections
174446-0

Here are the results after pretying the dutch word list.
174448-1
I randomized the words and added coma's, periods and capitals.

I'm now going to look where the gaps are in letter count .
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Offline tp4tissue

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Re: Yet another keyboard layout: BoeKoe
« Reply #35 on: Fri, 28 July 2017, 15:55:51 »
Guys, how does the same hand ranking work..



Does it currently mesh with the following conditions  (my opinion)



::: same hand , different fingers   is    good,   

because one handed is easy to time, and have very low probability of mismatch..

This also accounts for rolling letters like  p o i n  on qwerty for point. or  i o n for any TION words.



:::same hand, same fingers,  same row is good.

:::same hand, same finger,   different row is bad. (but not by much)






Offline iandoug

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Re: Yet another keyboard layout: BoeKoe
« Reply #36 on: Fri, 28 July 2017, 16:34:14 »
Guys, how does the same hand ranking work..

Good question, I've been wondering the same thing. Den added it in V2 of his scoring, and I mostly work with V1 so have not tried to figure it out.
FWIW I normally look at the other metrics (which are not in those summary charts) like hand balance, consecutive finger use, etc. But it's too many screengrabs to post in these discussions.

Does it currently mesh with the following conditions  (my opinion)
::: same hand , different fingers   is    good,   
because one handed is easy to time, and have very low probability of mismatch..
This also accounts for rolling letters like  p o i n  on qwerty for point. or  i o n for any TION words.

I suppose it depends on your design philosophy. KLA does not worry about rolls (inward or outward) or row-jumps etc like some of the other analyzers.
Some people think both hands should do an equal amount of work. Which leads to vowels and consonants getting split, one hand getting the vowels. That makes long strings with one hand unusual.
See (much reduced) screen grab from "hand balance" metrics for a bunch of layouts attached.

:::same hand, same fingers,  same row is good.
:::same hand, same finger,   different row is bad. (but not by much)

I think KLA prefers you to NOT use the same finger twice in a row on different keys. It's a little awkward.
Screenshot of same-finger presses from same test (Alice, using Den2 scoring) attached.

Others with more experience than me may have different views.. :-)

Offline Sc0tTy

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Re: Yet another keyboard layout: BoeKoe
« Reply #37 on: Fri, 28 July 2017, 17:25:56 »
So I have created a new word list.
I removed the original English word set as it was to small and used the same source that I used for my Dutch set.
Here is my source: * Top 50000.xlsx (2904.3 kB - downloaded 27570 times.)
Basically its any word used over a 1000 times in the original set and then spread according to usage.

The word list is random (seperate for dutch and english) and contains capitals, dots and comas.
I wasn't a 100% happy yet, so I did some manual changes in the .txt for KLA.
You can grab that here: * Wordlist en Woordenlijst 2.txt (309.6 kB - downloaded 4563 times.)

I suggest you use that one now.

Here is the new scoring based on that set:
174460-2
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Offline Sc0tTy

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Re: Yet another keyboard layout: BoeKoe
« Reply #38 on: Fri, 28 July 2017, 18:35:37 »
Ayt 105.00:
174464-0
174466-1
* 105.00.txt (13.44 kB - downloaded 189 times.)
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Offline iandoug

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Re: Yet another keyboard layout: BoeKoe
« Reply #39 on: Sat, 29 July 2017, 01:18:00 »
Well done :-)

Actually did consider putting H on S myself but thought it would be a bad idea because I thought (incorrectly it seems) that sh was a very common bigram in English.

Offline Sc0tTy

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Re: Yet another keyboard layout: BoeKoe
« Reply #40 on: Sat, 29 July 2017, 04:21:28 »
Well done :-)

Actually did consider putting H on S myself but thought it would be a bad idea because I thought (incorrectly it seems) that sh was a very common bigram in English.

Yeah don't like it there either, gonna try to move it.
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Offline Sc0tTy

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Re: Yet another keyboard layout: BoeKoe
« Reply #41 on: Sat, 29 July 2017, 13:59:24 »
I will be changing the name of the layout back to its original: eNNe.
BoeKoe doesn't make any sence now and this is a layout for English and Nederlands.
So if you are making a new list, you can use that name :)

Because you made such high gains, I feel "Mod Ian" can be dropped because you had a lot of input so it will be the "original".
When its finalized I will make a "low thumb usage" mod for my personal use.

I've also updated the opening post.

Now for another round :P
« Last Edit: Sat, 29 July 2017, 14:08:16 by Sc0tTy »
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Offline Sc0tTy

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Re: Yet another keyboard layout: eNNe
« Reply #42 on: Sat, 29 July 2017, 14:59:31 »
104.59 :)

174521-0
174519-1
* 104.59.txt (13.45 kB - downloaded 179 times.)
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Re: Yet another keyboard layout: eNNe
« Reply #43 on: Sat, 29 July 2017, 16:04:00 »
104.32, I really like the load spread now!
174541-0
174543-1
174545-2
Out of inspiration for the night...

« Last Edit: Sat, 29 July 2017, 17:31:06 by Sc0tTy »
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Offline davkol

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Re: Yet another keyboard layout: eNNe
« Reply #44 on: Sat, 29 July 2017, 18:18:26 »
Some people think both hands should do an equal amount of work. Which leads to vowels and consonants getting split, one hand getting the vowels. That makes long strings with one hand unusual.
For clarification, hand balance and hand-alternation frequency are two different things. The latter is much more important for typing rhythm.

Clustering vowels on one half of the keyboard is typical for maximizing hand alternation. There isn't consensus, if it's desirable—because of insufficient data at this point.

I think KLA prefers you to NOT use the same finger twice in a row on different keys. It's a little awkward.
Basically any practically used ranking discourages same-finger ratio and row jumps (separately though).

Offline Sc0tTy

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Re: Yet another keyboard layout: eNNe
« Reply #45 on: Sat, 29 July 2017, 18:44:02 »
Putting them on the other side of the keyboard also makes sure that consecutive finger load is going to be as low as it can get.
While I don't have any data hand alteration in my mind makes the most sense because this way you reduce the awkward positions your hand needs to make because it has time to move to the next letter as the other hand is typing. Thought obviously not completely removes it.

And having the vowels on one side is just the natural way you'll get the most hand alternation, though the U is a weird one as its used way less..
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Offline Snarfangel

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Re: Yet another keyboard layout: eNNe
« Reply #46 on: Sun, 30 July 2017, 08:38:16 »
Here is the layout I've been using on my Kinesis for the past year or so:
174577-0

I like having the letter e under my thumb. The keystrokes actually flow together pretty well, though it takes time to get used to it. I used MTGap 2.0 software and the patorjk site to come up with the basic outline and tweak it. For the data, I used Google Corpus stats from Peter Norvig http://norvig.com/mayzner.html and a gigabyte-plus corpus I made from Project Gutenberg books, years of emails and other writing, and tweet and other corpuses [corpii?].

If you'd like to try the layout in patorjk or similar online program, here it is:
« Last Edit: Sun, 30 July 2017, 09:18:22 by Snarfangel »

Offline Sc0tTy

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Re: Yet another keyboard layout: eNNe
« Reply #47 on: Sun, 30 July 2017, 11:35:51 »
Here is the layout I've been using on my Kinesis for the past year or so:
(Attachment Link)

I like having the letter e under my thumb. The keystrokes actually flow together pretty well, though it takes time to get used to it. I used MTGap 2.0 software and the patorjk site to come up with the basic outline and tweak it. For the data, I used Google Corpus stats from Peter Norvig http://norvig.com/mayzner.html and a gigabyte-plus corpus I made from Project Gutenberg books, years of emails and other writing, and tweet and other corpuses [corpii?].

If you'd like to try the layout in patorjk or similar online program, here it is:


Some nice ideas there! Like how you put the number layout on 5 keys, might use that one for my layout in step 2.
Yeah I've seen a ton of layouts put the E on the thumb but i really don't like it, my thumb would't be able to handle such a big load.
You have to remember that your four fingers are making a natural movement but your thumb is not, its moving sideways
Putting O and A on the same finger is also a big load.

For what language(s) is this layout? Seems bad for English or Dutch:
174589-0

Not sure why but a 100% flip results in a lower score :/
174591-1
Haven't found a difference in the layout

Here's the json:
* eNNe 104.32 F 103.28.txt (13.96 kB - downloaded 198 times.)
« Last Edit: Sun, 30 July 2017, 15:54:13 by Sc0tTy »
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Offline iandoug

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Re: Yet another keyboard layout: eNNe
« Reply #48 on: Mon, 31 July 2017, 01:07:39 »

For what language(s) is this layout? Seems bad for English or Dutch:


Depends how you measure :-)

Attached screenshot comparing it to other famous layouts on ErgoDox, using Den1 scoring, input text is Alice.


Offline iandoug

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Re: Yet another keyboard layout: eNNe
« Reply #49 on: Mon, 31 July 2017, 01:55:32 »
104.32, I really like the load spread now!
Out of inspiration for the night...

Was quite a battle. Probably if you mirror it the score will improve again.