Not much interest for this topic, it seems. Ah well - it's understandable if people get tired of "but what if we did THIS instead?" topics. Especially since the benefit from this one might be considered minor.

I'm still a bit intrigued by this one though, especially since I believe that the learning cost would be very minor indeed. I don't think my motor memory would mind. And in that context, any benefit would be easy pickings. In my view, it would also not really change anything so dramatic that it'd break with the main Colemak paradigm; some may disagree with that though.

The biggest contraindication as I see it, is the "backward" US keyboard.  ;)

Interesting thoughts about the fingering, but I'm worried that the wrist angles may be strained that way? When it comes to re-fingering letter keys, I'd be careful with that as it might spoil some of the bigram considerations Shai made.

As for the fingering of the left-hand bottom row: At least, those keys are rare. So you may get away with what you've been doing and not really worry about it unless you're a perfectionist.

The magnitude of the bottom-row stagger is indeed - forgive the pun! - staggering. That's part of what makes me think that the proposed shift might work, since the stagger would be approximately the same one way or the other except that the proposed shift would facilitate outwards wrist angling.

And there you go for 'normal' keyboards:

By the way, ds26gte, I've been thinking about different fingering (?!) too, but as DreymaR said, realised that that would mess up the finger weights, digraphs and stuff.

This fingering would make every normal keyboard more or less an ergonomic one.

Well, being in North America and thus lacking that extra key in the bottom left, I don't see this working for me.  Moving 'Q' and 'W' over would break 'Quit' and 'Close Window' respectively and losing the 'Z' would break the Undo-Cut-Copy-Paste block.

If I lived in a different hemisphere, then I might see the appeal (although you guys must have a terrible time with the left Shift key!).  But even within that limited audience, you're still only going to have a limited percentage that want to change their layout even after having already changed to Colemak.  Even my own Colemak-B tweaks are a bit of a pain, since I can't use the default layout files (worst problem word of all for me: 'job') and the '?' and '/' shift behaviour swap gives me trouble when I type a question or a complex URL on QWERTY .

The less frequent the usage of the key, the harder it is to build up the muscle memory, so changes to 'Z', 'X', 'V' and -- depending on region -- 'Q' and 'W' will cause ongoing problems when using any combination of 'bottom row shift' and standard Colemak or QWERTY.  One of the key points behind keeping the corners the same on both QWERTY and Colemak is to make it easier to learn to learn the latter (and swap between the two while away from your home keyboard) than the mess that is Dvorak.  Bottom row shifting erases either a third or two thirds of that advantage (since Colemak changes one corner already).

Now, I'm not saying that any of these things are deal-breakers (I do use Colemak-B, after all), but there are certain costs involved in any fiddling around with standard Colemak, and not everyone will consider them a worthwhile trade.  Even among the brave souls that do switch to Colemak in the first place, most are not willing to screw around with their layouts any farther...and that goes double for Shai.

In the end, of course, you are the one typing on your own keyboard, and you can do anything you like to it.  That said, people tend to do the safe and standard thing instead of the adventurous and non-standard, which explains relative install bases of QWERTY, Dvorak, Colemak and non-standard Colemak (in that exact order).

I'm in a different hemisphere from the UK keyboards (unless you are talking about the northern hemisphere, in which case I am not).

Additionally, it's not the relative position of the XCV block I'm worried about; it's the absolute position.

I've been testing the half-bottom-row shift (ZXCVB< instead of <ZXCVB on my comp) a little now. It seems good!

My speed is back to about 50 WPM sustained (TypingMaster 3 min) in just a few days; it's not been that much higher without the shift. (My best Dvorak speed was 60 WPM, and I was doing 55 WPM on a good day before I tried the shift.) That's a pretty low recovery time for me, so I'm not freezing up using this.

My fingers have adjusted well to finding the keys, since the same fingers as before are used. I'm still just a little confused about digraphs and shortcuts but it doesn't feel bad at all. The shortcuts are now easier to do with one hand than before, for the most part.

The B stretch is radically better now than before, and even more not having to do the old B stretch - this feels like the biggest improvement. I'm enjoying the C as well. The hand position feels better.

This change can be implemented independently of Colemak. I'd recommend it to QWERTY users as well, if they wanted just a little improvement (although I'd be puzzled if they wanted that small improvement and not the HUGE improvement of Colemak!).

I'd still not recommend making it a standard change to the Colemak definition, for obvious reasons: It does change a little more and as such would make some doubters a little more doubtful, and those primitive US boards just can't do it (although US citizens could buy a Euro board easily on the net these days). On the other hand, if someone in reach of a Euro board did doubt Colemak's not changing the bottom left row then this would be my solution.

I'd still love some feedback on this from the Shai.  :)

(Korivak: The Euro left Shift key, fortunately, isn't difficult for us who use it. Maybe our left Shift would be a problem for someone used to finding it in the US length, but I have a feeling that even that wouldn't be hard to retrain.)

I am writing this post with the version of double shifted colemak that I posted a picture of further up this thread. It's the one that Drey made for me and that puts another 'z' on the normal colemak 'q' spot.

Anyways, now I'll tell you about how it's going: Horrible. This is virtually the first thing I'm writing with double shifted colemak and it's really a pain. However, I can already feel the potential of this and I'll post about my further experiences later on.

Shai: I don't think there should be several official versions of colemak, that would just complicate matters further. If you are considering making the shifted colemak official, keep it so that all letters are on the same positions on all keyboards. And 'double' shifting would be much neater and 'real' ergonomic.

Drey, you are right: the 'double' shift was in fact too much for me. I'm staying with normal cmk.

I don't even feel like doing the bottom row only shift, because it horribly messes up the really important cut, copy and paste shortcuts, giving me brain-ache whenever I have to use them on a normal QWERTY keyboard. And that would be most of the time, since I don't want to swap around laptop keys. [I mean when I use cmk on a physical QWERTY keyboard]

Also, having different letter positions for different keyboards just makes things more complicated. If I got accustomed to the bottom row shift cmk, whenever I'd type on a 101 keyboard, I'd be typing gibberish. It's hard enough for me to switch from cmk to QWERTY (typing QWERTY physically gives me headaches) so switching between 3 different layouts would bring even more turmoil into my typing world. I will try to get hold of an apple 101-key US keyboard anyway, because then I will actually be able to see where the punctuation is that I type and because hitting left shift will be so much easier.

A few weeks ago, I was examining my hand positioning for inefficiencies (as you do), and I noticed that left and right hand bottom row typing did not match. I typed 'm' with the index finger, but on the left hand 'c' was getting typed with the middle finger. Crazy!

So, I decided to type as follows:

c, v, b - index
x - middle
z - ring
-/_ - pinky (using UK layout)

This works really well I think. In short, the shifting to the left is not needed at all to my mind. The index finger can happily type c, v & b without any confusion after a week or less. Well it did for me. And you get the added bonus of using that key to the left of z for whatever you want! (with the now free pinky). I keep it as -/_

I'd be interested to know how frequent CT is compared with SC (same finger)? Anyhow, I have not noticed any discomfort fingering this way. And it keeps the shortcut keys in the same place.

Ah, throwback time. So this is where I invented the Angle ergo mod (or to be precise, ISO-Angle). Did anyone else invent it independently from me? I wonder. Also, I don't remember who came up with the ANSI-Angle(Z) variant or when? Anyone?

The Wide variants for ISO (Wide-Slash) and ANSI (Wide-Quote) haven't been quite standardized as the 6 key may go to either the left or right hand and there are some other minor variations around – particularly regarding the old RightBracket key. I think that Slash for ISO and Quote for ANSI are the best options, although ISO has the best solution for both hands.

   
    Colemak with the ANSI-Angle(Z)Wide(Qu) ergo mods

[edit:]Oh, I found where and when the ANSI-Angle(Z) and Wide mods originated! It was Cevgar in 2010 who first posted it. I've tweaked the Wide mods (ANSI/ISO) a bit since then, but the idea originated there ttbomk. Note though, that kalixiri had had a Wide mod going for two years by then! So it's not easy to say who really did this first.

The top row movement is considered more of a hassle than an advantage. It moves the upper-inner key (G on vanilla, B on DH) too far out of the way. And the pinky has no problem opening up outwards without causing the wrist to twist, unlike the bottom row. So what do I think about it? I've considered it and rejected it, long ago.