Okay, I’ve done various fiddling, as I sit and think about what’s useful in a layout and how existing ones can be improved, and I figure I can share some of my ideas here.
For my own purposes, I’m eventually going to make a keyboard with as few keys as possible (probably around 50) in a complicated 3d shape, and lots of extra layers and special logic built into the firmware.
But I also think it’s possible to do a lot better than a standard keyboard, even without questioning some of the basic layout choices (such as sticking to Sholes stagger and QWERTY layout, keeping the number row, aligning all the keys the same way on a single plane, and putting everything roughly in a rectangle).
So here’s a pretty conservative (in the sense that it should be pretty easy for someone used to a regular keyboard to adopt) 60% style layout, but which I think has several huge improvements over the standard shape:
(1) A bit of extra space between hands
(2) Easier to reach shift and enter on the right side
(3) Much easier to reach delete, on the thumb
(4) Several extra modifier keys which might be used for any number of things
This one might be called the “space invader” layout.
I’ll try to post further ideas here in the next few days/weeks.