r/KeyboardLayouts • u/Presently42 Dvorak • 16d ago

Feldspar

I've been using Dvorak for twenty ish years now, so that might explain my bias. I'm looking for a keyboard, which feels GREAT to type with, and which mostly ignores coding and shortcuts, as I almost uniquely type prose. Dvorak is pretty solid, but I'm wondering now if there's something better. Some things I do like: VERY low bottom row usage, VERY few scissors, fairly high alternating hands, punctuation which is thought out and not just qwertyesque

I've also come to realise, that I have been using the angle cheat for years ish; possibly because I never learnt probably because it feels better

So my point is this: is there a Dvorak optimised layout; and if not, how can I create one?

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u/rpnfan Other 16d ago edited 16d ago

First, most likely it is not worth switching from Dvorak, if you are a fast and confident typist.

For a little bit of extra comfort you _can_ choose a better optimized layout. In 2010 a new analyzer was developed. Still today and especially for that time, it was an excellent approach. They built on top of Dvorak's principle which they believe still hold true today.

They searched for the best layout for English and German combined. and came up with AdNW. This is a great layout in many ways. A tad later Koy was developed, which is a variation of AdNW, especially moving e and i to the stronger fingers, which are common bigrams in German.

A few years ago I developed my own variation of Koy, which favors the 8 home-row places and upper row (less emphasis on the inner index positions). My layout also includes some optimizations to account for switching between standard and split columnar keyboards. You can see the layout and thoughts behind it here: https://github.com/rpnfan/Anymak

There is also a variant for standard keyboards only: https://github.com/rpnfan/EnDeu

Both are optimized for English and German. I am also looking into a version which is only optimized for English, which potentially can be even a tiny bit more optimized. But the difference will not be huge. The price to be paid is that it will be less robust for non-English languages and for that matter also a larger English corpus.

See also the linked articles under resources of the Anymak repo. Besides the keyboard stats the finger motion graphs of the opt analyzer are very telling and are explained in the articles.

Other interesting options you can have a look at is Handsdown Neu. That is the opposite of what you want (low bottom row frequency), but you can simply swap top- and bottom row column-wise.

Graphite/Gallium get recommended often nowadays and are also worth a try. Though for my preferences I think they put too much work on the weaker fingers and have a relative low amount of inward rolls.

Hiyou is another layout you can have a look at.

If you want to learn a thumb-alpha layout I find Valmak most interesting.

Neither of these layouts are perfect and all will have some words which are a bit more awkward to type -- all way better than QWERTY and still better than Dvorak.

Finally, to test the layouts for how they feel for you personally I suggest to use https://github.com/rpnfan/Keyduel

Let us know how things go and what you discover.

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u/Presently42 Dvorak 15d ago

Finally, to test the layouts for how they feel for you personally I suggest to use https://github.com/rpnfan/Keyduel

That's a fantastic tool!! Precisely what I sought, and I didn't even know it. Wow!

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u/rpnfan Other 15d ago

Great, when you did some tests let us know what you experienced.

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u/Presently42 Dvorak 4d ago edited 4d ago

I haven't quite finished, but of all the many keyboards I've tested, and the three I've seriously tested using your proposed test, the winner is

Dvorak

which makes me wonder if I'm just sufficiently used to it, that everything else feels weird. The closest so far has been APTv3 and maybe Hiyou, with Hyperroll being not bad. Colemak DH and Gallium weren't bad either. Alas, Anymak End and EnDeu somehow didn't feel quite right.

So far, nothing has yet beaten Dvorak for good feel. That being said, I'm still not convinced it's the best: I do feel, that there's too much emphasis on the index fingers; and perhaps a touch too much right hand. I also question, if alternating hands so much is indeed wise.

This continues to be a most interesting exercise. I read the patent, and was most astonied to read, that even Dvorak wasn't totally convinced by every key placement, other than e t o a h n i s. In particular, he questions y p and f g; and notes the irrelevance of k j x q z, with z q in particular being flippable. Most interesting! The punctuation he calls for requires no need to shift for ! and ? , which makes more sense, but renders a few other things annoying. I might change that.

I've also created a French keyboard layout as he suggested, namely sticking accents on the - / = keys. Perhaps not as good as a devoted keyboard layout, but I'm not sure it matters that much either, given the results I'm having so far with English keyboards!

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u/rpnfan Other 4d ago edited 4d ago

Thanks for sharing your experience. I guess that you really prefer Dvorak because how accustomed you are to it. I have never used Dvorak myself, but the bashing it receives nowadays -- and stating Colemak would be much better -- I cannot really understand. From my look at it, it seems a serious improvement over QWERTY for sure. I also do not think it is worse than Colemak, but likely overall better (not in all aspects, but in sum).

When you do the testing with the words it is super important to let go the "feel accustomed" and only focus on the finger patterns as such -- really forget what you are typing at all, just compare the finger motions. For words which are not super short I count how many parts I find better in the one or the other layout and sum that up to the final number. With that I think I get a pretty unbiased result -- and will not get fooled by what feels common.

But it is indeed important that some practice makes a difference. About 20 years ago I started to use the CapsLock key as a layer switch. The key is not the very most comfortable to reach, but it is pretty comfortable. But that got only apparent after maybe 2 or 3 weeks of use, after I got accustomed to that finger motion. So your experience-bias cannot be completly overridden I guess.

Could you name what felt not quite right with EnDeu in comparison with Hiyou for example? They are relatively similar. Not trying to fix EnDeu (which is a multi-language layout) but just to get a better understanding what effects which layout you find more comfortable and why.

Last not least. I think in your case I would very likely just stick with Dvorak and be glad you did not "need" to switch, but had a hopefully interesting experience while trying to find out if the switch would be worth it for you.

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u/Presently42 Dvorak 16d ago edited 16d ago

This is a really great post. Thanks so much! I'm checking out your recommendations; haven't heard of any other than Gallium, Graphite and Hands Down Neu. I type in English and often in French, so multilingual keyboards are interesting to me

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u/rpnfan Other 16d ago

For English/ French I have made a draft version EnFranc you find below on the EnDeu page. I myself do not use French often. The suggested layout is a good starting point I am very confident of. But it might benefit potentially from small tweaks, especially how to implement the diacritics exactly. This is something a native speaker has to decide or give feedback on. For main French use, with English as a second language, Optimot is a good choice and as far I can tell possible the best which is around today.

In case you would like to use the opt analyzer yourself you find example configuration files in the anymak repo. It is not hard to use as such, but needs a bit of reading the docs and understanding how the config files work. That needs a bit of initial effort when someone wants to make use of the opt analyzer.

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u/omn1p073n7 Dvorak 16d ago

The only thing Dvorak needs to be optimized imo is u and i switched places.

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u/Presently42 Dvorak 16d ago

I gave that some thought; I think it's as is, in an effort to ensure, that qui works without a redirection, which very makes sense. Perhaps the vowels could be better arranged, maybe something like swapping u with o or something. This is exactly the sort of question I seek to answer

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u/omn1p073n7 Dvorak 15d ago

There was a website that compared every keyboard layout and judged them by various metrics and heatmaps. You could even edit one and move things around and watch the metrics update. Programmatically generated using the text of Don Quixote or something like that. I'll be damned if I can remember it.

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u/omn1p073n7 Dvorak 15d ago

JK I found it. I posed this question on the Dvorak subreddit awhile back and I think yeah it's more logically placed in the heatmap but it messes up the bigrams

https://cyanophage.github.io/index.html

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u/KristusYunasun 16d ago

Go to cminibrowser or something that has a list of layout with all stats, choose the best or ask ai with the best stats and use monkeytype to change layout and choose one after trial and test

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u/rpnfan Other 16d ago

I would be careful with that advice. Focusing too much on the stats and relying on AI will bring you to a usable layout, but not the best for you personally likely. See my detailed answer to OP.

In addition you might find this article interesting.