Wow, nice work there! I won't try it but I most certainly have to congratulate you on your innovative diligence.

I agree that the +3 looks very nice, but something feels wrong with it. The thumbs aren't placed where they should be and the right hand is one key too far to the right. Ah well, that's my feeling and as you say you'd need time to get used to this! I prefer using Extend mappings to an actual arrow cross anyway, so for me it isn't so important to have those keys there in the middle. Home position beats anything!

I'd put PgUp/PgDn and Home/End more like the way they are on the original keyboard! It's more intuitive to have them on top of each other than left/right, even though Home/End have a left/right logic to them as well.

Wouldn't it be better to swap the Ins and Del keys? The Ins key is generally in the way and quite annoying when hit inadvertently; Del can be annoying but less so in my experience – and it's much more frequently used.

Esc can be damn handy – ask any Vim or Extend user! I'm thinking of the three remaining former F# keys – maybe Esc could take the place of W and W move one step to the left? Then you could put ScrollLock up in the old Esc position. Another suggestion is the old Space bar for Esc! Then, the three special keys in the old Esc/Alt/Win locations (they're so rarely used, they don't deserve thumb estate!) and the three old F# keys could be freed up for something awesome! They're a bit of a stretch for the thumb but they might be used for something useful that you don't need very often? Macros, maybe (one may map them to F13–F15 and then remap)? Or the Japanese could use them for Hira/Kata and other special keys they need!

Update: PKL Colemak Demo now available.

@davkol. If we are talking about Cherry style keycaps, the regular sized ones can be shuffled and flipped 180 degrees (Not 90 degrees!). Or you can buy flat POS style keycaps. Other sculpted keyboards... as you said YMMV. Still, I'm going to try to stick with it for a while, see if it isn't something that can be adapted to.

@bph... I'm not sure how to feel about that comment. I mean, chestnuts ARE lazy. I thought that was obvious.

@DreymaR: Thanks for the feedback! Some questions:

-Could your elaborate on your issues with thumb placement. I realize the L.Thumb would probably be more comfortable on F8, but that complicates key placement.

-The Right Hand placement is due to necessity. Even in the +2, moving the L.Hand over was the better choice. With standard F Row placement, moving the R.Hand over would mean tucking the thumb under the hand to hit F3/Space. The more natural home for R.Thumb in that case would be F4 which means the R.Thumb only has two keys in easy reach instead of three. Then you need to reshuffle the nearby thumbkeys, the best option probably being F5/Alt, F4/Space, F3/Enter, F2/AltGr. Alt should stay relatively centered for its various shortcuts, and enter should be within range of the L.Hand when mousing.

-I love your extended mappings as well. Problem, doesn't fix lack of thumbshift issue, doesn't fix mouse distance issue, doesn't fix right side numberpad issue, doesn't (as far as I remember) fix AltGr placement issue, and requires PKL (which doesn't always play nice with other programs.)

-Home/End PgUp/PgDn... meh. I'll point out in your BoT you have the same Home/End placement relative to the arrow keys. PgUp and PgDn are secondary to Home/End in my book and going Up a row is easier than going Down.

-Ins and Del were a tossup. Placement was chosen as the more central position has less hand bias, and makes Ctrl+Alt+Del easier. Considered U/D + Del vs End/R + Del same finger use, but could not come to a solid conclusion. Fair point about Insert though.

-Win+R, Win+D, Win+E, Win+F, Win+M. Maybe not as useful as Esc, but on the other hand, the F9 key is really not THAT easy to hit from that position. Still, it does allow for most of the above shortcuts to be hit with the R.Hand. You know, should you ever need quick access to both the numberpad and show... desktop... ok, ok. Shut up.

-Esc. Agree it should probably get better placement. I was tempted to put it on the space bar, but having that big of a target for Esc made me nervous. Esc was originally put so far out of the way so it wouldn't be hit by accident. Not really the designers fault that everyone seems to think it is appropriate alternative to Ctrl+Q or whatever.

Idea: What about swapping Insert, Delete and Esc?

BTW: Interesting fact, Typematrix keyboards come with an insert that reminds buyers that it may take a week or two to get comfortable with the layout.

Man, no love, eh? ...oh well, that's fine. I'll make my own posts, with blackjack and- ...yeah, anyways.

Update: PKL Demo now includes Inverted and Inverted+Angle Shifted versions of Qwerty, Colemak, Dvorak, Workman and MTGAP (main 30). Numberpad still not fixed. No ISO layouts yet. Maybe tomorrow.

@davkol - I've done my own work before with rotating and shuffling keys, but that is an excellent reference link. Thanks!

Hi, pieter; thanks for the support!

To answer your questions: I already did a 'raised' keyboard back in 2010. I should probably update it as now that I've actually given some serious thought to the thumbrow. Also the demonstration image and keytweak urls seem to no longer be working. The text art is still there if want to check it out. The MK-Type. Also listed as the Maltron test drive in my sig.

The problems with the MK-Type were:
- Altered row shift.
- Didn't fix numberpad issue.
- Distance to numberkeys.
- I didn't tell people you could just disable the spacebar and type THROUGH it instead of actually removing it.
- Symbol keys needed to be shifted to thumbrows.

On the other hand, the problems with Left Hand Mousing:
-Almost all mice are biased towards right hand users.
-Almost all keyboard shortcuts and hotkeys are on the left hand.