It's not entirely true that no other script layouts use Latin letters on AltGr I think! As I recall it, I've seen such layout definitions in xkb.
Also, I feel that the "academic" approach of cramming all sorts of hardly used script letters/symbols into the AltGr layer simply won't be so useful for the average typist. For academics it's gold, I suppose – although I feel that it's hard to make such AltGr layers entirely intuitive anyway so I tend to prefer sequences for that kind of thing these days (to write ȣȝ 'ough' in Middle English for instance, it's a _lot_ easier to type `'ou` and `'gh` with a Compose key than to try and remember where I had put those two little rascals in dead key layers).
I'm often somewhat undecided on which approach to follow, of course. For my Hebrew implementation I did include special dead keys for all sorts of Biblical typing etc.
Extensive AltGr usage is not good, either way. If you're typing your own language you shouldn't have to use it a lot. Better to have several locale variants, even if it means more work for us designers. One good principle though, is minimal tweaking. For most of my locale Colemak variants, I try to change the same few keys so the differences are few and kind of consistent between variants.
Martian's point on symbol keys is an excellent one. Some symbol keys have to be "demoted" since there are more letters in Kyrillic than in Latin script. But some are still useful. Demoting something as common and useful as quotes to AltGr+Shift positions is too harsh I feel.
]]>Rulemak has ' and " on AltGr(+Shift)+ь, that is AltGr on their Colemak position. But I have an unreleased version that uses йцукен Shift+number positions for ":;? as you suggested (it already had № on Shift+3). But that still has no (obvious) place for the single quote, which I'd like to include as well. So it's still unfinished.
Actually the key I miss most myself is +/=, taken by ъ, so I consider moving ъ to AltGr+ь instead, given its low frequency.
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What bothers me a little bit is symbols, specifically "/" . It's not something used when typing in Ukrainian or Russian so perhaps it could be replaced with something (say again apostrophe). By the way, I don't like the idea of putting ь or ъ on a shift layer only because "you don't need capital letters anyway" because I did it and then I needed to write in all caps but I didn't have Ь and it was troublesome lol. I said this because you could also think about putting ь or ъ instead of / but I don't like it, so the apostrophe is the only viable option in my opinion.
By the way, where do you have double quotes in Rulemak? In ЙЦУКЕН it's shift + 2. Since we don't use some symbols (@ &) and some are used just for math/programming for which you could switch to a latin layout (^ _ + =), this is where we normally put ? " etc. in ЙЦУКЕН. I understand that you want to keep it as close to Colemak as possible, but at least @ could be replaced with double quotes in my opinion, perhaps there are other symbols that could be used as well.
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Now that I pondered it a little bit, I think for my own layout (probably not very good for official Ukromak/Rulemak) I'd put " on shift + 2 and ? on shift + 7, exactly the way it's done in ЙЦУКЕН, and since / is not needed this key could be used for one of the letters. This way we'll remove only symbols that are not used in Cyrillic at all (/ @ &, and # turns into №) but we can still have mathematical symbols in case you want to write some mathematics together with Cyrillic haha.
]]>Martian: In the EPKL standard implementations, the AltGr states are left for latin letters which are frequently needed for loan words etc. So try to avoid these for letter keys, please. Ghen's more ambitious four-level Rulemak may be more complete for pan-Slavic and other special typing, but I feel it's less useful for actual day-to-day typing in mostly one language so I went for the old latin-on-AltGr strategy.
EPKL has some tricks of its own up its sleeve though, so we can figure out something clever for ґ either way.
(b ̄◇ ̄)b
]]>Rulemak-UA:
FWIW, Rulemak already has the apostrophe on AltGr+ь, so the top left key could be used for something else.
Maybe put ї there instead, and re-gain the =+ key?
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Also to clarify for @DreymaR, I don't know anyone else who uses "ukromak", this is just what I called my own modifications that are basically rulemak but then implement all the changes exactly the way they are done in Ukrainian ЙЦУКЕН.
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Regarding apostrophe. I decided to do a bit of research and I think we mostly use just a simple single quote ' . That certainly makes things easier.
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I checked @ghen's rulemak. Yes, I think replacing ы with і and э with є is sensible while also putting ґ and ї on the altgr layer. And the apostrophe is already in the left-top corner if I understood correctly? So yeah, the only thing that bothers me here is I see why you wanted to do it the other way around with и and і : because this way we can also keep ї on the (altgr) home row which is nice. That's unfortunate but I still think most Ukrainians would prefer it the way I described at first because и > и is what everyone's used to.
]]>If it's useful for Ukrainia, I should add it to the EPKL Rulemak variants (it's got the main Rulemak and Bulmak for now).
]]>To answer @ckofy's question (though a bit late...) I did go with rulemak/ukromak because they're coincidentally really good in terms of ergonomics, and it's cool to have layouts that are phonetically the same. Def makes switching easier if you do it for a couple of languages at the same time like I did.
Though I'm not entirely sure I will go with it now. After switching to colemak, I plan to practice qwerty from time to time on a normal keyboard so that I can easily use both but doing it for ЙЦУКЕН as well... That sounds like a lot of work. But then having phonetically the same layouts is really cool. I haven't decided yet.
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Oh good to know I documented my changes in this topic as well:
https://forum.colemak.com/topic/519-rul … layout/p5/
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Also wanted to note that I still really like my idea of using just a single Latin and a single Cyrillic layout (esp. since I have +1 Latin language now), this is what I use now (thanks to macOS for making it possible with built-in languages, no need to edit anything). But I do agree with my past self that it feels a bit ridiculous at times... Perhaps I could make it easier by using one-tap modifiers.
]]>ЙЦУКЕН source
ЫВАМ ТОЛД source
ЫВАМ ТОЛД 2.0 source
Диктор source
Phonetic Colemak source
Phonetic Colemak Mod-DH source
You know, the most frequent letters are largely the same for many Indo-European languages, so at least the Colemak-transliterated home row АРСТ НЕИО (or НЕІО) should be a good starting point for a Russian/Ukrainian layout.
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