This is a custom ergonomic keyboard layout for English that I developed in 2014, and currently use as my daily driver on all of my non-phone computers. The keyboard is meant to be optimised for speed and ease of typing, with the following goals:
- keep the most common letters in the most easily accessible locations (e.g. vowels on the row your fingers rest on)
- minimise the need to use the same finger to type two successive letters
- after the above, minimise the need to use the same hand to type two successive letters
- have easy access to a very wide variety of accented or otherwise altered Roman letters
I evaluated various layout choices through patorjk.com/keyboard-layout-analyzer/, using the text of my undergrad thesis (which I was writing at the time) as my primary test text. The end result is the layout you see below:
The name Úgy has the same rationale as 'QWERTY'; typing the first four keys on the top row outputs \úgy (where <'> is a dead key.).
The layout gives access to a wide variety of non-base Latin letters by means of the alt key and/or dead keys:
- alt: uc?/ oa.rs- ;vz > µ©¿× œæ.®ß¥ ¶vȝ
- alt+shift: C+ OA,TS :Z > ¢÷ ŒÆ,Þ§ °Ȝ
(note that alt+t should produce lower-case Þ; this is a known bug)
The dead keys are:
- ` > àèìòùẁ
- ~ > ãẽĩñõũṽ
- ^ > âĉêĝĥîĵôŝûŵŷẑ
- | > āđēḡħīōŧūȳ
- ' > áćéíḱĺḿńóṕŕśúẃýź
- " > äëḧïöüẅẍÿ
- / > ðłø
- µ (alt+u) > ăĕğĭŏŭ
- œ (alt+o) > åḃċḋḟġḣıŀṁṅṗṙṡṫůẇẏż
- alt+. > ḁḅḍgḥḳḷṃṇṛṣṭṿẉẓ
- alt+, > ḁçęģįķļņŗşţų
- alt+v > ǎčěȟǐňǒřšǔ
All of the above should work with capital versions as well.
Note that one downside of this dead key setup is the need to type a space whenever you type the English possesive clitic ='s, as just typing <'s> directly outputs <ś>; the use of </> as a dead key also makes some coding more difficult. In a future revision I may move </> and some <'> dead keys to alt+/ and alt+', respectively.
TEMP NOTE FOR X11 VERSION: Put the keyboard file into /xkb/symbols, then edit /xkb/rules/evdev.xml and /xkb/rules/xorg.lst following the guide at https://people.uleth.ca/~daniel.odonnell/Blog/custom-keyboard-in-linuxx11#e.