All of the alternatives are better than Qwerty. They are quite the same in terms of efficiency (less than 1% difference on different texts), so any of them will be all right.

You can go to patojk keyboard layout analyzer site, load Colemak or Dvorak, Norman, Arensito etc then shuffle some keys to get new layout quite easily. You can get thousands of keyboard layout that way without inventing anything new.

You only have to follow core principles:

ARSTDHNEIO must be at the home row.
E and T on different hand to alleviate workload.
QZJ; must be at the corner or at the Y-qwerty position.
ZXCV should be fixed. Ideally QWAHBM should be fixed too. The more the better.

All these keyboard layouts are quite the same, you're looking through a kaleidoscope and may think what you are looking at are unique and better than the rest.

Why reinventing the wheel again and again?

They are quite the same, and I mean that they are the same in term of speed (no layout is faster than any other, your speed depends on YOU) as well as comfort (no layout is more comfortable than any other). Just different feel and different key combos you have to master.

So you can choose any of them. Once having chosen, ignore the rest.

Dvorak is more popular but community support is almost non-existent. Colemak is preferred because its helpful and ever expanding community, as in this forum.

For hotkeys' aspect, Colemak has decided advantages over Dvorak when keeping ZXCVQAHBM in their old places. Norman is keeping ZXCVQW too, but it is new and its forum is quite deserted, so no community support.

As a Colemak user, I am only 98.560234% satisfied with it, but who cares? The switching process is quite tough to go over it again to get less than 1% of efficiency.

So since the T and E keys are not on different hands will that be annoying or not? Also as I said rolls are not the best for me. What physical traits does Colemak have and what traits does Norman have?

Also lalop thank you, however I know that they are opinion based for which layout you like better. I was just wondering if any one has tried both and has some opinions about both, however it appears that is not the case.

There is no one who "try" Colemak and Norman.

Keyboard layout is not a car or a shoe. It's impossible to "try" a layout since switching process is quite tough, and it takes at least 6 months to type fluently in any layout. I think "try" is not the right word, "commit" or "work" would be more suitable words. You have to go all the way with a layout, work hard at increasing accuracy, type it full time, do typing exercises daily.

With so much investment of time and effort, once converted to Colemak, most people will stick with Colemak for life and ignore the rest.

If Norman has higher same-finger "by design", then down the drain with it say I. Not a good idea! Cramps you up.

Colemak seems to me to be very well-rounded. There's a plethora of layouts that try to be better in some respect, but it seems that Colemak does very well on the whole and that's probably good enough for you too. Norman is bound to be a higher-risk venture in that respect, with less people using and trying it, less support etc.

In fact, all I see is entrepreneurs with some idea of a better layout, riding their horse as far as it'll take them, but in hindsight sacrificing something more important (to me at least). Improving on Dvorak and Colemak overall takes a very insightful and well-balanced approach, and honestly I haven't seen that many of those. If you want to move a lot of keys and sacrifice shortcuts, Dvorak is probably plenty good for that. If you value the don't-fix-it-if-it-ain't-broken approach to optimization, then Colemak is spot on. There's also the preference between higher hand alternation (Dvorak) or more rolls (Colemak) – that may be an individual choice for the most part.

Check out my sig topics for the kind of support you can get from just *one* (granted, one zany) member of the great and enthusiastic Colemak community! My impression is that community support for Colemak is even better than for Dvorak these days, although Dvorak has better MS Windows support for instance (unless you use PKL – which I do!).