Hola! Nice initiative there. Did you by the way see my work on comparative language stats for Colemak? Feel free to run that for Spanish/English if you wish. Basically, yes - Colemak should be decent for Spanish based on monogram analysis at least.

I did provide Spanish and LatAm variants with symbols where you're used to? Did you want more? The letter block AltGr mappings, maybe?

Actually the çÇ are quite rarely used and don't deserve a direct key. In my suggestion they're very easy to hit (I think!) on AltGr+k.

In my Unified approach I provided a direct key for ñÑ and direct accent keys for the rest. That should be good I hope?

I have € on the 5 key, as is quite common, so I didn't duplicate it on E (which I needed for the arrow symbols).

CapsLock isn't Colemak to me, just a good idea that came together with Colemak. So for instance in Ubuntu you can find the CapsLock settings separately and choose 'CapsLock key behavior' as you like including Backspace; or, like me you could set it as the lv5 chooser key and use the Extend mapping layer to enhance navigation and editing! (Including Backspace of course.)

To use the angle/wide mod I've usually edited the /etc/default/keyboard file. In XUbuntu there's a settings GUI you can use. If you've patched or replaced correctly that should work - but you may have to rebuild the xkb settings first. The patch installer I made should take care of that (removing some temp files before rebooting). Did you use the shell script (sudo instdiff.sh)? The reason my images are made with the Wide mod on them, is that it's much work to change back and forth for me. But for you I could make a set of my nice vector graphics showing the Spanish layouts, if you need it.

I like to change the key caps physically when using the Wide mod. I can type on unchanged keyboards too but I prefer to move the caps. I often move them to a wide QWERTY and let guests on the machine use that; they don't complain much about the Wide mod.

Yes, I do like the 'us' layouts better using the Wide mod. As you say, all the changed keys will then be in the middle under the agile index fingers.

The reason both accents are moved is that the standard keyboard has those accents, as I remember it. There's not much else to put there I feel. Sorry about not making a Catalan version (I didn't know about it), but obviously it's going to be hard for me to make every single locale in the world so I had to be a little bit choosy. Actually, if you look in my symbols file (particularly the 'colemak' one) it shouldn't be hard to edit in a better solution for the Catalan there. For everyone else, I think that AltGr+k actually is really easy to hit. Especially with the Wide mod!

Okay, here's what: Stephan Otte has made a layout that includes Colemak, some coder-friendly AltGr mappings and the Wide mod in one layout choice (in the symbols file). What I've done is to provide a more module-based approach: The Wide mod is defined not as a layout but as a keyboard model. This means you can type Wide with ANY of the installed layouts, such as QWERTY or Dvorak or whatever.

But you'll need to install my files properly first. Did you manage to patch your XKB files with my patch? No strange error messages while patching?

As the XUbuntu uses a GUI dialog, so KUbuntu may do the same. In that case you should find the Wide mod as a keyboard model when it's installed (and you've rebooted). If not, there's some other settings file you need to find...

Even if the grave isn't necessary for others than Catalan typists, I see no need to drop it. What else should be there instead? On my Norwegian keyboard there's both acute, grave, cirkumflex and umlaut although they're rarely in use. Some users will need them some of the time.

€ on the F key won't be something I'll provide by default. It's easy to edit your x11/xkb/symbols/colemak file yourself to get what you want.

Hola otra vez, -- english version below the ======= row ---

después de más de un año de darle vueltas, no desisto de intentar tener un teclado colemak en español, con intención de que sea aceptado por los usuarios no-geeks.

Me gustaría someterlo a discusión y que me dijérais qué os parece.

Para que tenga aceptación, los símbolos han de seguir igual. Así que propongo varios teclados distintos, con los símbolos en el mismo sitio: uno  estándar, uno "raro" para poder escribir más rápido y uno variando la disposición de teclas de colemak.
El problema viene del hecho de que en qwerty tanto la tecla de tilde (dead_acute) como la ñ están en el meñique y cualquier vocal siguiente está garantizada la alternancia, mientras que en el colemak la o sufre en ambos casos.

Estándar

el estándar simple sería el mismo que ha desarrollado @DreymaR (Colemak[eD]) manteniendo los símbolos locales (keep local symbols), con una modificación:

• añadir el símbolo de euro en la tecla f (antigua tecla e) como altgr+f o en la e (si se mueven las teclas quedaría en la e) (en el diseño actual no tiene euro)

Peros:

• Repetición del mismo dedo (meñique) para la ó y ño.

Para escritura rápida - wide mod

Sería moviendo la tecla del acento al medio, para utilizar el índice de cualquier mano y poder acentuar de forma rápida cualquier vocal. En el teclado "normal", escribir "ó" conlleva repetición del meñique o desplazamiento.
Para esto, se desplaza la fila inferior hacia la izquierda, quedando una especie de wide angle mod

Peros:

• Es muy raro y es difícil acostumbrarse, y menos alternar entre qwerty y colemak

Alternativa candidata

Como todo esto es muy "raro", es poco probable que tenga aceptación generalizada (estoy hablando ya con algunos profesores de colegios que están interesados), así que hago la siguiente propuesta para tener un teclado colemak español, no raro, con keep-local-symbols y sin perder la alternancia para los acentos (y la ñ): simplemente permutar la posición de la "n" y la "o".

Peros:

• yo no le veo ninguno, seguramente perderemos algo de las mejoras que supone el colemak, pero me parece un buen compromiso

En ese caso, propongo quien sea programador, use una versión de colemak US con n-o cambiadas:

Peros:

• que no está disponible según instales cualquier linux o en OS X, por ejemplo, etc, probablemente necesite un patch o hacérselo uno mismo. Se pueden dejar hechos pero sería raro conseguir que se difundiera (ya veremos si se consigue que el otro se difunda).

¿opiniones?

Muchas gracias, un saludo!

NOTA: he usado http://www.keyboard-layout-editor.com para los layouts

======================================================

Hi there,

after more than a year of thinking about this, I do not give up managing to have an "official" colemak spanish layout, that would be accepted by non-geek users (majority of people).

I would like to ask for opinions and discussion.

The main idea to be able to get accepted is that the symbols have to remain the same; this is pretty obvious.
So I propose several layouts, all with the keep-local-symbols philosophy: standard, "weird" - angle mod, and a colemak variation.
The problem accepting the standard directly is that in spanish qwerty both keys ñ and dead_acute use the pinky and there is guaranteed finger alternation. In colemak keep-local-symbols you would have pinky repetition for "ó" and "ño".

Standard - keep-local-symbols

This would be the same that @DreymaR has developed, with a slight modification

• Eurosign € on Altgr+f (antigua tecla e) - this follows the keep local symbols (it is normally on key e on qwerty) and current locale es layout does not have € sign

Probblems:

• Pinky repetition for "ó" and "ño".

Fast typing with angle mod

Here I would propose to move the dead_acute key to the middle of the bottom row, so it gets pressed with the index finger of any hand so finger alternation is guaranteed. This involves shifting z,x,c,v,b to the left, as in an angle mod.

Peros:

• It is kind of weird for non-geeks and is difficult to get used to it. Alternation between colemak and qwerty is almost impossible

Alternative layout

As it is now it will not be accepted generally (I am already talking to some school teachers that are interested), so this is my proposal: simply swap the "o" and "n" letters.

Problems:

• In a first view, I do not see any. Probably it will not be as optimized as colemak, but it looks like an acceptable compromise.

If somebody is a programmer, probably will go with colemak-US, but if he is interested in switching to spanish layouts, this can be hell. So I propose Colemak-US with n-o swapped.

Peros:

• Not directly available, would need a patch

What do you think? What problems do you see?
Thanks a lot for your help, kind regards

NOTE:  I used http://www.keyboard-layout-editor.com for generating the layouts

Hola,

(he editado las imágenes, las de dropbox no salían)

Gracias @wjames por responder.

Una pregunta: ¿a qué velocidad escribes (en palabras o caraceteres por minuto)? Yo el problema que me encuentro al escribir rápido es que me resulta muy complicado poner "ñ" sin que la letra siguiente (será vocal) salga acentuada (ñá, ñó, etc) o la siguiente a un acento sin modificar. Técnicamente es muchísimo más rápido la alternancia que la composición.
Y eso me frena bastante. ¿quizás sólo me pasa a mí?

====
ENGLISH:

I just edited my previous post, the dropbox images were not working.

Thanks, @wjames, what is your typing speed? I find very difficult to compose a ñ without composing accidentally the following vowel.
I find alternation way faster than composition, because of that reason.
This makes me slower. Am I the only one?

Hi DreymaR,

thank you for answering.
It looks that my quest to find an "acceptable by non-geeks" spanish layout leads to a dead end... :-(

but that would somehow "break" the keep-local-symbols philosophy (you would have a labeled key with no symbol there) and those quotes  ( ‚‘’ „“” ) are not used in spanish anyway. People would have to guess where the € is.

I know, but I do not see any other way of avoiding pinky repetition and thus making colemak "worse" in some way than qwerty.
How would you recommend solving that?

Did you have any success in trying getting your locale variations accepted in X.Org?
What would it take to get your spanish variant accepted there?
Maybe if there is just standard colemak keep-local-symbols out of the box it would help just getting started.

Thanks again.
Regards.

Actually, I now have a solution to the € issue as far as Colemak[eD] is concerned. I've been rearranging the layout a bit while I made new dead keys for PKL. There is now a greek dead key on AltGr+5 (for Windows; not sure how to make it work for Linux yet). The down arrow is now where greek mu used to be on AltGr+Shift+M (a better place for it too). Thus, the AltGr+E mapping can hold the € sign – which is nice and logical and compatible. Yay!

There will be some nice help images for PKL soon. Then I'll set about making the xkb files compatible. At the least, AltGr+5 will take the µ sign so the above cascade can take place.

Concerning ó and ño: I recommend using full Colemak[eD] (that is, the 'us' variant) instead of just the partial one ('ks'). In full Colemak[eD], the 'ñ' is on the LSGT key so it won't create a same-finger bigram with 'o' anymore. The acute accent is still on the left bracket key but it's unshifted so it should be easier to hit. I think the AngleWide ergo mod will provide an even better solution as both 'ñ' and '(´)' will now be in the middle where both index fingers can reach them!

If that's not enough, there's always the possibility of adding these letters to AltGr+H/L. Again, the Wide mod will make the AltGr key easier to use but it isn't strictly necessary.

Do you think that'd be necessary?

   
    Spanish Cmk[eD], with the AngleWide ergo mod

I'm gonna share my thoughts and an idea to enable some sort of International Colemak on Macs.

I always wished there was a "Colemak - International" on OS X, like the "US - International" layout on Windows.

I'm using Colemak on OS X 10.11, the layout comes installed on the OS which is very nice, but one of the things I don't like about it, is that the key is not put as a Dead Key, to use the "´" dead key you gotta do Option+E, so if I wanna add accent marks to a letter (áéíóú), I have to do 3 keypresses just to type "á", and considering how common spanish words with an accent are, this shortcut becomes quite annoying, and decreases the typing speed.

Colemak layout:

Here's the OS X standard Colemak layout (1st pic), the keys in orange mean "dead key", so it has none, unless you press and hold the Option key (2nd pic).

QWERTY US International Layout:

As you can see in this image, the QWERTY US International layout has 2 dead keys, highlighted in orange, one of them being the key, no need to press a modifier key to trigger these. Very nice and comfortable.

INCREDIBLE IDEA INCOMING:

And then I had this idea. If you use Karabiner, there's an option that makes the QWERTY layout act as Colemak, and OS X will think you're on QWERTY when you're not. So here's the cool thing, if you select the US International layout on OS X while enabling the Colemak option on Karabiner, you end up with what I call "Colemak International". This makes the key become a dead key, no more need to press Opt+E, pretty cool huh.

This is the result (just to clarify, this image was shopped, because OS X shows the QWERTY layout as it thinks you're on that one):

And finally, I edited a code keymon made for Karabiner, this code remaps left Option+N to "Ñ", no more pressing Opt+N and then N again:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<root>

  <item>
    <name>Change Option_L+n to ñ</name>
    <identifier>OptionLplusNToEnie</identifier>
    <autogen>
        --KeyToKey--
        KeyCode::J, ModifierFlag::OPTION_L | ModifierFlag::NONE,
        KeyCode::N, ModifierFlag::OPTION_R, KeyCode::N
    </autogen>
    <autogen>
        --KeyToKey--
        KeyCode::J, ModifierFlag::OPTION_L | ModifierFlag::SHIFT_R | ModifierFlag::NONE,
        KeyCode::N, ModifierFlag::OPTION_R, KeyCode::N, ModifierFlag::SHIFT_R
    </autogen>
    <autogen>
        --KeyToKey--
        KeyCode::J, ModifierFlag::OPTION_L | ModifierFlag::SHIFT_L | ModifierFlag::NONE,
        KeyCode::N, ModifierFlag::OPTION_R, KeyCode::N, ModifierFlag::SHIFT_R
    </autogen>
    </item>
</root>

And that's pretty much it. I hope this helps people on OS X who want an acute dead key on their Colemak ala US-International, and a slightly easier way to type "Ñ", for a more fast, comfy typing :)

Well, in fairness, if you type ó with my Colemak[eD] which has a similar acute dead key as yours (AltGr+'), you should use alternative fingering and it won't be bad at all!

' with pinky for all acute accents
ó: o with ring finger
í/ú/ý: u/y with middle finger; i with middle finger if ring finger is weak
é/ń: e/n with index finger

That's more accents than you'll need, but it's mostly to illustrate.

My principle is to have the accent dead keys all on symbol keys, so they're on that hand anyway since the acute is a too common accent to stuff up on the number row! Thus, for many locales I've made an even more accessible acute dead key; especially good with the Wide mod I think.

This is my Spanish layout with Wide mod (the accents are all dead keys):

Note that with the Wide mod, you can choose which hand to use for the accent key. So you could write ó with left index finger and right pinky for instance. It's  a bit of a jump for the left hand, but worth it – provided you learn to float well (which you should do anyway).

The config files are downloadable from my sig topics, for Linux/XKB and Windows/PKL.

But hey, nice work! :-)