Since yours is a "minimal" layout change, have you studied the Minimak layout? You and Ted might find something to talk about it seems. :)

Most layouts move the E key to the home row. It may not be so important after all I think, as long as your middle fingers rest in a position equally comfortable with the upper and middle rows! I think good QWERTY typists do that and it seems natural to me. This does of course mean that nothing too common should reside on the bottom row, but I think you have that covered?

Single-letter frequencies is only so important. The real acid test comes with di- and trigraphs. I at least, hate same-finger digraphs with a vengeance. But there's much more of course, not all of which is easily parametricized.

Hi pafkata90

I noticed that you come from Denmark too, so you will understand problems of including the Danish letters and symbol positions. I've developed it using the Danish QWERTY template so my layout is actually:
QWERFJUIOPŨ
ASDTGKNHLÆØ'
<ZXCVBYM,.-

I've updated the post to make it easier for the non-Danish user to understand the layout.

I think you make some excellent observations there.  It's a definite improvement from QWERTY.  There's a few things I say are obviously wrong with QWERTY:

a) E and T belong in the home position and should be on the middle finger
b) J and K have no business being in the home position
c) getting the high-frequency keys within reach of the middle and ring fingers (workman)
d) avoiding same finger repetition

QWERFJ scores on b, not so much on the rest, but that's the thing about a minimal layout.  You've got to choose your highest priority and focus on that alone.

I think you should give some consideration to finger movement distance.  I have some quibbles but I mostly agree with the workman position ratings (I used the idea in Minimak).  However, what you need to realize that those weights are multiplied by the key frequency.  So moving E from a 2 position to a 1 position blows away moving Z from a 5 to a 1 because E is used far more than 4 times that of Z.

When you look at the key frequency ratings (mtgap has a good diagram, I haven't put one up on my site yet), you see that E and T outweigh the bottom 14 keys put together, they so outstrip everything else.  You really have to address them before anything else when you start looking at what effect they have on all of the metrics.  That's why they're the 4-key layout for Minimak.

You might approach it with the D-E and T-R swaps.  Try it and see what you think.  They're reasonable swaps to make.

I found patorjk's keyboard layout analyzer extremely useful in evaluating alternatives.

Good points.

I do also believe that dreymar is right about the middle and the ring finger can operate the upper-row. If you put your hands relaxed on a flat surface, you will see that a straight line can be drawn from the pinky to the middle finger tips. This line do not intersect with the index finger, and to force them on a straight line you need to curl the middle and ring fingers quite a lot. Therefore, I don't think that the home row is optimal. So maybe the home row can be redefined to (QWERTY:) ASEF JIL; ?

By the way a D-E swap could be fairly easy to learn, because that is only a same finger swap.

I have used the layout for a couple of days now and the hardest to learn is the "h-k" swap, because the letters move finger. So now I have updated the my layout without this swap - I will post my results soon.

Ted: Do you have experience with how hard it is learn the "e" left-to-right-hand swap?

Compare to QWERF and don't confuse: http://www.michaelcapewell.com/projects … ERF_Layout

As a very minimal-change layout, it seems quite nice. The most obvious thing is that it doesn't relocate E. But actually maybe that's not so bad, since the Qwerty E isn't terrible - certainly T is a worse key than E.  The other notable point is that keys don't change fingers - which perhaps makes it easier to learn, but means same finger ratio does not improve. DE still being on the same finger might be a bit annoying and cause users to want to go a further step?

In that case Capewell warns against potential discomfort while typing ER/RE digraph. See the note: http://www.michaelcapewell.com/projects … ERF_Layout

I sincerely hope this doesn't encourage anyone to use a minimal layout. They're really not what people need, half-baked placebo.