Hello, I also write in a mix of languages, in my case mostly Dutch (85%), English (10%), other languages 5% (German, Spanish, French). For my main language, Dutch, Qwerty is even worse than it is for English. Colemak is better, but not as good as it is for English.
By the way, it is hard to judge a layout by looking at one or two digrams, like how hard "th" is. There is much more to it, you need an algorithm to score layouts.
Your options if you don't want Qwerty:
1. One of the "good" layouts: Colemak, Dvorak, AdnW, Carpalx
2. Variants of the good layouts (Workman, Norman for Colemak; Dvorak I/U swap etc.)
3. A custom, personal layout (Portuguese/English in your case).
Me, I calculated a custom layout. I know of three programs that you can use for this:
- AdnW. Look for Optimierer als C++-Quelltext .... etc and download it. (this means Optimizer as C++ source code). The website is in German, but the source code does have an English manual, it is fairly clear. The program is written, as you have guessed by now, in C++
- MTGAP. Website, source code, it is written in C
- Carpalx. Website and source code, it's written in Perl.
Steps:
a. Get the code, and maybe change some things. See the manuals, some things can be changed at runtime, other things need modiying the source and recompiling.
b. Make a text corpus that is representative of what YOU type
c. Feed the corpus to the program
d. Calculate your layouts
e. Make test layouts to try them out in real life (Autohotkey for Windows; xkb maps for Linux, at least that is how I do it)
f. maybe you want to play some more: change settings, assumptions, make it more alternating, more rolling, etc -> go back to step a.
Remarks:
- AdnW will give Dvorak-like layouts. AdnW will have nice alternation (at the expense of other criteria).
- MTGAP will give Colemak-like layouts. MTGAP will have lots of 'rolls' (at the expense of other criteria).
- Carpalx will give Carpalx-like layouts :-) As far as I can see, Carpalx is very good at finger/ hand balance (at the expense of other criteria).
An easy, quick but rough online layout tester is patorjk
Good luck!
Edit: the analysers also have the option to "improve" one of the standard layouts, so you may start with Qwerty or Colemak or Dvorak or whatever and improve that, for instance by swapping max. 5 keys.
Last edited by pieter (02-Sep-2015 11:58:57)