I'm in doubts about my xkb solution. Making two 'English' layouts to showcase the mod is okay on paper, but my design goal of modularity is severely compromised. And enabling a hack to change the colemak letter block on the layout level seems unsatisfactory, especially since it'll cause trouble for any locale layouts that remap the affected keys (they may do that on the AltGr level).

I could make the Curl mods a keyboard model addition instead. On one side, there's already quite a few of those in my big bag and adding Curl mods would inflate this number further (effectively adding another dimension to produce a ANSI-ISO/Wide/Angle/Curl matrix that obviously has a lot of entries). On the other, I've already lumped the WideAngle mods with Curl in my head, as they're all about getting better hand positions without substantially changing the layout per se – and Curl is already entangled with Angle. Implementing them as models would enable any colemak layout to become a Curl layout, including all locales, phonetic layouts, mirrored and tarmak layouts and other people's colemak layouts. If it hadn't been for the G moving back in place, Curl models would in fact have worked for the dvorak and other homerow optimized layouts too!

In that case, the key codes themselves would move so that the 'h key' for instance would be found in its new position for all purposes! Trying to use such a model with QWERTY would be "interesting": The Hm switch would be the same but the Hn(Hk) and Gvbt(Dvbg) ones would be pointless. Also, it'd be silly to have Colemak move the G away and the keyboard model move it back instead of just leaving the damn thing be in the first place – but that'd happen under the hood, for the most part. Making the mod a model would emphasize our feeling that Colemak itself isn't really touched by this.

I'd like to imagine that Curl users will also be Wide users (it'd keep things simpler for sure), but I fear that doesn't quite hold. Ah well.

Another issue is that of hand modularity. As it stands now, you may choose which hand(s) to activate when, and even mix-and-match between the options to produce for instance a Curl-Dvbg/Hk mod! Although I don't think anyone will want to do that exactly, the freedom to choose here is very nice as it aids compatibility with the Tarmak setup for instance. I could make the keycodes component modular quite easily but not the geometry so that'd really balloon. Ah well, can't be helped I suppose; geometry isn't even strictly necessary for the function of the keyboard but it matters to help images and new users will want those to be working.

Hard for me to make suggestions, not being very familiar with the way Linux manages layouts / geometries etc. But I suspect that people installing your xkb files are generally going to be pretty solid Colemak users. I can't imagine there are many people who like to change their layouts around frequently. Maybe there are some that like to switch back to Qwerty for whatever masochistic reason, but that's the only likely use case I can imagine. Is the problem that even when back in Qwerty, you would still have the incorrect H,M etc?

On second (or is that third or fourth, maybe?) thought: Changing the XKB model will change the Extend layer! This is unwanted behaviour.

I want Colemak Extend+G/D/B to be Mouse Up/Down/Button1, for instance. This is mostly geometrically based and not by letters (although it is a nice mnemonic that 'Button1' falls on 'B' of course). Changing the model, the mouse up/down would be jumbled. Not badly, but unintentionally so I don't like that.

The changes to the Extend layer due to the WideAngle mod felt reasonably intuitive. But they mostly concern rarely used symbol keys which therefore aren't given central functions in the Extend layer.

Ah well. Maybe I'll find a robust and simple solution eventually. The current layout implementation isn't that bad, it mainly lacks a bit in modularity.

On the typing side: I think that some n-grams and near-n-grams are very nice with this mod! A trigram like 'beg' used to be more troublesome when the left index finger had to jump up two rows instead of down one, and there are several common words containing this and similar n-grams – including, it turns out, the word 'bigram'! :-)

The 'NK' bigram rolls nicely with the hand moving in for it, and it also seems to work well in 'kne'/'kni'/'kno' type trigrams . That's interesting, as the Colemak 'he' bigram was uncomfortable enough to partially inspire new layouts and this mod – it'd have been easier if it were a 'hne' trigram I think!

Well, it's in between as it's a bit about physical key position but as you say the most important keys of Extend are bound to the home position.

While I have you on the line: I only found a link to the other DH-mod topic from your github pages! This topic is at least as important I think, from the Cmk forum perspective.

Also, could you please mention my mod variant on those pages? I think it's beneficial that both variants are shown so people can find the choice that fits their preferences best.

https://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=66546.0

Whoa, a brain wave (plus, a plug for the DH mod at GeekHack, yay)!

In that thread, a Dutch typist talks about the J key being common in Dutch which is a problem for Colemak. H and M on the other hand, are about equally common while K is rare (J/M/H/K had 46/34/33/27 k strokes in that Dutch-based syllabus).

So... for a Dutch typist, wouldn't something like a KJ switch be nice?!? Like the DH mods, that'd make for a better experience for the Dutch typists without really changing the other benefits of Colemak. And it wouldn't even move any keys from their QWERTY positions, unlike our Hk and Hm switches.

Sounds like a nice possibility, at least. Now, if I were Dutch I'd be in a dilemma because I type a lot of English no matter what. But it seems to me that the Dutch find English-optimized keyboards in general to be bad for their own language.

Oh. I was assuming based on the info from that Geekhack thread, which only used a home-cooked syllabus. Too bad it was so off the mark then.

Based on frequencies, the Y and J certainly should switch in a Dutch layout! But that switch alone would create a bad same-finger bigram for the infamous IJ! So while the Y probably gets put in J's corner, I'm really not sure where to put that J then. I'm not Dutch and it's not all that easy to find a letter that doesn't link up with I a lot, so I'm out of good ideas... ;-) But it should be some 3-key switcharound for the sake of simplicity, I think.

Nonono. If you do that, FI/IF becomes a huge stumbling stone. Remember that you type some English too, but in Dutch those bigrams can't be nonexistent either?

But uh, we're not discussing the DH-mod at all now are we, although this started off as a relative of it. Maybe we should take this elsewhere...

DreymaR, stevep99: Just wanted to let you know, an ANSI keyboard user here, using your A-frame mod-DH layout on a 60% programmable keyboard (a Poker 2).

A long time Colemak user, I had been using the simple mod-dh layout for a week and finding it quite natural. Out of curiosity, I decided to try the ANSI mod-DH with the **Z** key moved. That was a serious improvement (in feel for the left hand). Shocking!

That sold me enough to try the full A-frame mod-DH layout today and, I must say, it is a revelation. Brilliant! I don't suffer from RSI but I can tell that I am going to enjoy typing with this layout, it is so much more relaxed. Muscle memory is learning naturally to NOT twist the wrist ever so slightly -- something I wasn't even aware of before.

You have found the holy grail of layouts for this ANSI keyboard user (I happen to prefer programmable 60% keyboards). Only downside: I need to take my keyboard everywhere I go, having so quickly adapted to your layout!

Which LShift mapping are you referring to (the extra wide mods discussion)?

Ah yes.. I did give it some consideration but found the A-frame more rational for me -- the frequency of Space usage outweighed the Shift relocation (as intriguing as it is).

I actually like the right shifted home row and feel it *improves* the layout for me. Years of using the left pinkie on the convenient Colemak (CapsLock) Backspace, I guess, have made reaching the (Qwerty) Q and A positions feel more natural to me. Curiously, I find the left pinkie extensions feel easier even though I am right handed.

To that end, I left the square brackets on the right hand and mapped the semi-colon to the (Qwerty) Q and the quote to the A. I mapped the Esc to the CapsLock (big Vim editor user here with many applications conforming to the Vi modal mode of operation) and mapped the Backspace to the right Alt of the ANSI keyboard right of the Space bar (with the keycap inverted for the thumb). The right shifted hand position makes the thumb key quite easy to reach (and would be much less so without).

I right shifted the number row with the equal sign mapped to the left (right of the grave/tilde) to maintain the relative home row positioning.

The only other non-standard mapping I have is swapping the backslash with the Backspace. Actually, the Del is mapped to the (ANSI) backslash since the thumb (Alt) Backspace takes care of that!

      ` = 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 - \
    Tab  ; Q W F P B J L U Y [ ]  Del
     Esc  ' A R S T G M N E I O  Enter
    Shift  Z X C D V / K H , .  Shift
Ctrl  Win  Alt   Space   Backspace  Fn  Pn  Ctrl

To my eyes, the key assignments even look logical and balanced. :-)

This looks like a very nice approach for an ANSI keyboard!  As you have gone for moving all the keys to the right, you also get the benefit a easy-to-reach AltGr thumb key, which you have cunningly set to backspace. Did you find a bit weird initially to have the semicolon and apostrophe on the left-hand side?

My current setup is using the approach of keeping space where it is (using left thumb), settting Shift to be on AltGr (using right thumb). Despite seeming unconventional, I am finding it works quite well. Mind you, with an ANSI keyboard the shifts are not so bad so the motivation to try that may be lessened.

Interesting, I agree, I think your approach of having the apostrophe and semicolon is likely to work better than having the two square brackets there. Perhaps I'll update the example diagram on the Mod-DH page...

I have stopped short of using the double wide layout - the less than ideal possible solutions for apostrophe have held me back. But I have still implemented AltGr -> Shift and RWin -> AltGr on my single-wide layout.  It makes AltGr a little less ideal to reach (still using thumb - just) but I like having easy thumb Shift more. Probably the more optimal solution is to have Spacebar become Shift and AltGr as Space, but that's also too big a jump for me as I'm too used to left-thumb shift.