Hey guys,
So I have been playing around with ideas for a keyboard layout for maybe two years now, and this is the newest iteration. I'd like to get some feedback on what you think about it.
It is heavily influenced by Dvorak, with the vowels and punctuation on one side.
My priority for fingers goes middle>index>ring>pinky, and my priority for rows is home>top>bottom. The most difficult keys for me to reach on this layout are the top row keys toward the very middle, so I gave those the lowest priority. I didn't make any concessions to QWERTY for two reasons; I think it makes it difficult to switch between two layouts when they are too similar, and because QWERTY is garbage. As far as shortcut keys are concerned, those can go where you are used to them by adding them to an alternate layer.
I ran some books through a text analyzer for key frequency data, so here is that:
Key Occurrences %
E 120465 11.84
T 95755 9.41
A 84088 8.26
O 81596 8.02
N 71332 7.01
I 68475 6.73
H 65791 6.47
S 61514 6.05
R 51862 5.10
D 49418 4.86
L 41038 4.03
U 31742 3.12
W 28699 2.82
M 25420 2.50
Y 22914 2.25
C 21904 2.15
G 21900 2.15
F 19495 1.92
B 15922 1.56
P 14727 1.45
K 10772 1.06
V 8566 0.84
J 1820 0.18
X 1178 0.12
Q 857 0.08
Z 424 0.04
Here is a link to a layout analyzer I used as a reference:
http://patorjk.com/keyboard-layout-analyzer/#/load/4ccDHpcFThe top scoring layout (JYUP) is one I made a while back and is what I've been using for a while. I'm pretty happy with it, though I feel 'W' could be more convenient, and going from 'Q' to 'U' is a bit annoying, but it's not like that is a big consideration, as you can see in the text analysis data above. I don't fully understand the weighting of the metrics he used, but the fact that this is for staggered keyboards probably has a lot to do with JYUP scoring better than PYUW.
I use two different keycap profiles to help me keep my hands oriented. It was a lot more difficult to get used to the layout before I added them.
Here is a picture of my keyboard:
I think eventually I would like to ditch all the f keys and stuff in the middle in favor of having a large track pad fill that space instead.