I won't discuss the Win layout (it'd be easily fixable with MS Keyboard Layout Creator 1.4, working from the UK or UK International layout), since that won't help you enough it seems.

The AHK thing is strange. I tried to reproduce something akin to your problem on my Norwegian board (which is somewhat different) but couldn't. Interestingly however, I didn't get the 'o' to work, but only got the ';' instead! This is similar to your problem. It may be caused by the keyboard's scan codes; they are a bit strange in that area (my board has a VK_OEM_# key there).

I suggest that you try deleting all script lines that map a character onto itself as those are superfluous and may cause trouble (I'm thinking of the '::' line in particular). This should have no bearing on the '@' char though, as that isn't mapped.

The AHK program isn't bugfree so maybe you found a strange one? Are you sure you use the latest version of AHK? Doesn't look like there's anything relevant in the latest versions, but you never know.

Try adding #NoEnv to the top of your script, just on an odd chance it may have some kind of impact. I'm suspicious of the '@' char since it's used as a command char by AHK. (I've had a bitch of a time trying to get AHK to take notice of COMMA and PERIOD presses for instance.)

How about remapping the four offending symbols to where you want them to be? The switch between ' and # should be an easy one, while the problem with @ and ~ might be solvable by using a mapping line like +`'::~ in your script then?

These are just random suggestions; I'm afraid I can't do much better since I couldn't reproduce your problem.

I would suggest the same improvement to the script, or at the very least commenting the redundant lines out with the ';' char.

I believe that the original remark regarding US keyboards was made because Shai couldn't take the time and effort to test out alternatives; now that you've acted as a pioneer for the UK one it should be mentioned I feel. Perish the thought that anyone should be put off Colemak over such problems when they are so readily fixable!

One question arises then: Should we take the time to make and get online a proper UK Windows layout? One idea behind Colemak is to conserve the things that don't have to change including rarely used punctuation, so a UK user should only have to relearn those 18 mappings you list (plus extra AltGr symbols for added functionality as applicable). I guess not everybody in the UK will find AHK their tool of choice?

AHK is a great tool and this site should probably have a better link to it (with an icon button at the least), but downloading it from its own site makes sense logistically and is also slightly more courteous. I agree that the Colemak install could've contained, say, a separate directory with both the AHK script, a shortcut link to the AHK site, a compiled .exe from the AHK script and finally a small README. I'm still in the process of making a hopefully better AHK script though (although it's a bit slow going at the moment), so maybe we could just wait for it to get finished and then see whether Shai will agree to putting that into his install package. It'd likely be better if Shai would just make that AHK directory right away.

AHK does indeed produce some puzzling results on some systems. It's a work in progress based on another work in eternal progress (AutoIt3), and it always seems to have a few surprises up its sleeve. I see how that may put off the occasional dabbler, but it might be even worse if the dabbler were too trustful of it and then experienced annoying problems?

Surfing around the forums a bit: Just wanted to link to CShadowRun's UK Colemak topic here - he has a UK layout ready.

https://forum.colemak.com/viewtopic.php?id=229

Maybe I'll make an extended one if nobody else do.