Hey everybody,
I've used Colemak for nearly two weeks now and although it is so much better than qwerty I feel some keys are placed poorly and therefore I tried my hands at my very own mod:
Tthe aim of this is to create a very customized layout for me, it is not intended to work for others, but nonetheless I would love to hear your opinions on this:
First of all, I am using an ANSI keyboard. I know, some mods like the angle mod recommend to use ISO but I prefer the longer left shift and enter keys. Also getting ISO keycaps is either really hard or way more expensive.
Secondly, I am German and have to cramp in ÄÖÜ. Also I am going to change a few keys according to the differences in the letter frequency between English and German. (More info here: Wiki, Deutsch=German)
At the first look, my layout is vastly different (14 keys remapped including ÄÖÜ), but my understanding is, that the 8 homerow keys (ARST NEIO) and the easily accessible shortcuts (Ctrl+A X C V W T N) are the core ideas of Colemak. Correct me, if I am wrong.
Explanations of the keys:
D H:
These are from the Curl-DH mod.
G K M:
With H taking the place of old-M, I swapped K and M because I find pressing the M key easier and M is more frequent.
I don't like the Colemak place of G not at all. It's actually the main reason I started this mod. With D gone into the lower row and G being way more frequent in German (+50%) this seems a good spot.
Y V C X Z:
I wanted to keep X C V on the bottom row for shortcuts, but I banned X to the old-B position. Y changed with Z as is tradition with German layouts. I changed C and V because C is more frequent. I am not quite happy with the V position, but V is less frequent in German (0.67% to 0.98%), so it's something I can live with. Changing Y and V is no option because I do write a lot in English and I actually like Y's position. However, I've thought about placing Y in the top row, but then typing "you" becomes awkward.
Ä Ö Ü J:
Those keys are frequent, but not too frequent in German (0.27% - 0.65%) so I've put them on the keys I find especially hard to reach. J is actually the least frequent of those 4 and thus in a worse position than Ö. I like the O position the most of those 4 keys and I have thought about putting Ä (0.65%) there, but because it's above O I went with Ö (0.3%) instead.
B:
I don't know whether I like this position or not, but the testing so far is good and anything is better than the old position.
That's it. Tell me your thoughts, meanwhile I am going to test this layout. (Woohoo, back to 15WPM)