I've been using Dvorak for a few years now, and I like it. But I got to thinking how having the L and S on the right pinkie isn't so great, and R and N on the right ring finger is a bit much too. So after poring over lots of bigram statistics, I think I've found something pretty good - see what you think:
: , . P Y F N D G C
A O E I U L H T S R
' Q J K X Z M B V W
I just switched the I and U on the left hand. The right hand is a complete redesign, although it still has some commonality.
I couldn't find a better choice of letters for the right/left hand split. I think a great triumph of Dvorak is the high level of hand alternation and I don't see that any other layout is better in this respect.
All the common bigrams and trigrams for the right hand seem pretty comfortable. It's quite heavy on the index finger, but a politician would say it's lighter on the pinkie and ring fingers. ;-) The most significant same-finger trade-offs are CR (0.270%), FL (0.118%), NL (0.070%) and FN (0.067%). But the last 3 are on the index finger, so that's not so bad (in my opinion). For comparison, Dvorak has CT (0.487%), GH (0.228%), LS (0.198%), RN (0.169%) and TW (0.089%).
What do you think of it?
My stats come from
http://norvig.com/mayzner.htmlMy numbers include both directions for the bigrams, e.g. CR + RC.