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Rulemak: Russian Colemak layout

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Current bulmak version by Ghoul (or is it? – there's uncertainty about the XC positions):

ь 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 - =
    я ж ф п г й л у ъ ; ш щ
     а р с т д х н е и о ' ю
      з ч ц в б к м , . /
э ы ё: Dropped (Russian Kyrillic)

Current "Bulgmak" by Ghen, DreymaR et al:

ю 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 - =
    я в ф п г й л у ъ ; ш щ
     а р с т д х н е и о ' \
    ´ з ч ц ж б к м , . /
ь э ы: AltGr+' \ ;
ё: Umlaut/diaeresis dead key + е

Interesting.

I hope you'll agree with me that it'd be nice if we can harmonize the Kyrillic layouts as much as possible? That is, letters that aren't common/important may be placed in many different ways with hardly any impact on layout efficiency so it'd be nice if we could agree on a way to place those that benefits almost all users equally? There has to be differences between a Russian and a Bulgarian layout of course, but my goal is to make only the necessary differences and harmonize the unnecessary ones.

So, your updated version consists of these differences from the earlier proposed "Bulgmak"?
• ж and в switched (QWERTY W/V vs my V/W)
    – Your way is supported by Russian "Student" and Bulgarian "phonetic" to some extent; mine by Russian "Phonetic" and Bulgarian "new phonetic" to some extent.
    – So either way has some merit (mine more with the Russians, yours more with the Bulgarians?). Could Russians and Bulgarians agree on something here?
    – To my eyes, it does seem most consistent to put в on the phonetically corresponding QWERTY V (also, W and ж seem just a little more similar...), so I'm open to that!
    – Nevertheless, I fell down on the side of the most common Russian phonetic layout the last time around. Time for a rematch? :-p
    – Obviously, two camps have formed on this issue (although the more common layouts have ш on W – purely from shape I guess).
    – Consequently, I might make a user option to switch them! That way everyone could have their way on this matter (at the cost of ease and consistency).
• ь and ю where "Bulgmak" has ю and \ (QWERTY ` and \); "Bulgmak" has ь on AltGr+'
    – Is it your impression as a user that my proposition of ю in the corner is too hard to reach for actual typing? I would probably agree, as 1.1% is a quite high key frequency.
    – I'd like to keep the backslash key if possible, as it's quite useful (in Windows and more), but it's not a totally essential key either.
    – Is the AltGr+' combo too awkward for real use even if it's quite easy to hit?
• 'э', 'ы' and 'ё' as you say, are Russian and not Bulgarian letters; I think it's nice to keep some of them on AltGr presses though? And ё can always be made with a dead key.
• We seem to agree that it'd be nice to not need the VK_102 key so that ANSI keyboard users can play too; I use that key for a dead key which is useful but moveable

It's obviously entirely possible to change what the heck one wants for personal use! But we/I do present one layout as the semi-official one so it'd be very nice to agree on what that should be! :-)

All in all, I think I'd like to use your Bulmak as the recommended Bulgarian Kyrillic layout! As long as backslash is kept on AltGr+\ it looks very handy and logical to me. I'll also consider the ж/в switch for the Russian Kyrillic layout, although that's in conflict with Ghen's Rulemak. It just makes more sense to me, phonetically speaking.

[edit: There's also controversy over ч vs х. Having х in the H position is phonetically sound but ч isn't wrong there either and then I feel that the X position is really good for х visually. So I'm mostly with Ghen and the Russian Kyrillic layouts on that one. Hmmm, maybe we can't agree on anything after all... :-( ]

Last edited by DreymaR (11-Jan-2016 17:41:54)

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OK I have finally made a Windows native version of this layout rulemak by ghen (so you don't have to screw around with PKL) Here's a link https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7xmN1 … sp=sharing This is a rough throw together, so if you find anything wrong, please tell me. I have used people's work in this forum as a base for this layout with special thanks to Ghoul for providing a template and ghen for providing a picture on page 1 of this topic of the PKL version of rulemak.

EDIT: clarified a few things

Double edit 1/12/16: please download again if you have downloaded this layout before 1/12/16. There were serious issues I have now addressed.

Last edited by phly95 (12-Jan-2016 04:42:27)
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"This layout" being what, exactly? Please post a picture or ASCII code chart or reference or something to show us.

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"This layout" refers to the rulemak layout posted by ghen earlier. If you would like a picture, refer to ghen's post on page 1 of this topic. Also, thanks to Ghoul for providing me with a base with bulmak so I didn't have to start from scratch.

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Ah, Rulemak. I see. Here's a nice picture – I'm surprised we haven't put that up in this post yet:

    RulemakBoardFig_ghen_2016.png?dl=1
    Rulemak Russian Kyrillic layout, by ghen [2016 version].

But as you can see, this subject is being dug up again these days! Right now, I advocate the more phonetic and less KOI-8-based way of mapping the W and V keys. And I'm not sure about ё either; I'd like to see it in the position the standard layout has it in.

2016 proposal for a Russian Kyrillic Colemak-based layout (Rulemak++):

ё 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 - ъ
    я ж ф п г й л у ы ю ш щ
     а р с т д ч н е и о ь э
    ´ з х ц в б к м , . /

• ё and ъ swapped in compliance with the Standard and "Student" layouts
• ж and в swapped in compliance with phonetic considerations; partially supports "Student" as opposed to "YaWERT" layout

This is a little more in line with phonetics and existing layouts, I think. See earlier posts in this topic.

2016 proposal for a Bulgarian Kyrillic Colemak-based layout (Bulmak++):

ь 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 - =
    я ж ф п г й л у ъ ; ш щ
     а р с т д ч н е и о ' ю
    ´ з х ц в б к м , . /
э ы: AltGr+ ' ;
ё: Umlaut/diaeresis dead key + е

• Would it be acceptable to swap ч and х from Ghoul's Bulmak in a unification attempt (fits well visually and OK phonetically)?
• Russian э ы ё provided as AltGr/deadkey mappings

Last edited by DreymaR (17-Jun-2020 22:03:29)

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This was the rationale for my placement of ё, ъ and ь:

ghen said:

As you have seen, I too have been moving these around initially, but the reasons I settled on what I did were:
- ё close to phonetically related е and о
- related ъ and ь on similarly related ` and '
- ъ and ь are also commonly transliterated as ` and ', and transliteration was the basis of the layout.

But anway both ё and ъ are rare enough (unlike ь) to move around as you please; logical placement (easy to remember) wins over optimal placement (speed) here.

Drawback: common verb ending -шь is a same finger on the pinky, but it's a bad combo with any corner placement of ь anyway.
ь is by far the most common of the three (in Russian), so it gets the better spot.

For ж and в, I started from KOI-8 transliteration initially and just stuck to it.  I understand mapping В to either W or V is somewhat language dependent and/or just a matter of taste.  I did not think about it too much, but I prefer ж close to other sibilants ц and ч on the keyboard, it just feels right to me.

Again the goal was to be easy to remember for occasional Russian typists, not super fast to type on.  YMMV.

Last edited by ghen (11-Jan-2016 23:10:17)
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Added a critical fix for windows rulemak layout as a few problems existed.
1. It was stated as Bulmak, even though it wasn't.
2. it was missing letters in the Cryllic alphabet.

If you have already got the previous version, please remove it and download the new layout now.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7xmN1 … sp=sharing
this is the same as the old link, but the old version has been removed

Edit: new version 1/12/16 at 10:52, to the latest standards with a few letter swaps, also added new layout image in folder:
tzfGS3w.png

Last edited by phly95 (13-Jan-2016 05:19:31)
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That looks nice! It's no longer quite Ghen's Rulemak from 2013, but a NewRuleMak, Revolutionmak or whatever. ;-)

• These positions for ж and в seem more logical, as V is the common romanization of в.
    – KOI-8 is really a technical standard, not something that people think much about these days!?
    – The transliteration of ж to W must be rare as it isn't even mentioned in the Wikipedia article on Romanization of Russian?
• I feel that ё and ъ are in better positions like this, more recognizable for existing Russian users.
    – This position for ё is consistent with both the standard and "Student" phonetic Russian layouts
    – Transliteration of ъ to `is something I couldn't even find any references to (nowadays, 'ie' is used I think?)?!
• (The э is in compliance with the existing phonetic layouts; no worries about it.)
• ю is a "leftover" that has no stable reference position (apart from Ghen's Rulemak!), but this position is good for this quite common letter.
• The ч vs х issue is still annoying when trying to harmonize with the Bulgarian layouts. For Russian, this way seems right at least.
    – Romanization is usually č/ch for ч, and x/kh for х. Again, some support for х on the X key (except if you feel that ч next to the C key is nice).

Yeah, I think this looks good!?

The -шь ending that Ghen mentions is a hiccup, for sure. With a Wide mod, it becomes easier as you can hit ш with the left-hand index finger. Without, you'll need alternative fingering but a ring-pinky combo is still on the weak side for anyone who isn't an accomplished concert pianist or suchlike....

I took the liberty of fiddling with your nice layout image:

    Rulemak2016BoardFig_phly95.png
    The 'Rulemak' Kyrillic Colemak layout (2016 version). Original image by phly95.

Last edited by DreymaR (13-Jan-2016 15:14:12)

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в next to б "looks" nice.  And ж (translit. zh) then sits on Azerty Z position...  I think I mistype ж the most on Rulemak, so you might have convinced me here.

Swapping ё (0.2%) and ъ (0.02%) will make no real difference, so it's a matter of preference.  I decided to stop spending time thinking about that. ;-)

We agree on the other 99%.

Last edited by ghen (13-Jan-2016 11:16:45)
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Oo, thanks Ghen! Now, the big question: Could we call this Rulemak (v2016) because that's such an awesome name? Or do you want that name preserved for your original layout?

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Under peer pressure ;-) I hereby change my "official" version of Rulemak to this:

ё 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 - ъ
 я ж ф п г й л у ы ю ш щ э
  а р с т д ч н е и о ь
   з х ц в б к м , . /

I will update my layout files and images tonight and post the link here.

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A wise choice, Comrade Geertskij. ;-)

Seriously though, that's very cool of you. I really like to have one face "outwards", and then of course what each of us types on is our own choice entirely.

I wonder whether the Bulgarians could come around on the X/H issue...!

Here's a resource about Cyrillic transliteration that looks good and shows different languages in one table.

Last edited by DreymaR (18-Jan-2016 23:05:17)

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I have updated my implementations for xkb, pkl and vim (vim implementation is very convenient to switch between latin for control mode and cyrillic for input mode!), and edited the first post to reflect the latest version of Rulemak for newcomers.

carpalx image:
rulemak.png
DreymaR's pretty SVG image:
Rulemak.png

Last edited by ghen (11-Nov-2017 20:15:30)
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Ghen, that's awesome work! Yay!

Urgh, the Х/Ч issue still irks me. The transliteration link above looks enlightening.

Romanize Cyrillic х as h (or kh): The ISO-9 standard, the South Slavic languages (Bulgaria, Serbia, Makedonia)
Romanize Cyrillic х as x (or kh): Church Slavonic, the East Slavic languages (Russia, Belarus, Ukraina)
Romanize Cyrillic ч as č: All

Worth noting is that ISO-9 is supposed to be a one-to-one transliteration standard, independent on language. As such, it deserves to be noted at least.

I don't think that the Bulgarians will accept to map the х to QWERTY X as long as its transliteration clearly is H in the south Slavic languages.

But the QWERTY X in Russian/Belarussian/Ukrainian seems just as strong; even the IPA for its pronunciation in Slavic is /x/, I think (although its most common romanization is 'kh' in the East Slavic languages?) so the X is certainly in the game! :-)

Not to mention the fact that the Rulemak placements for Х/Ч are supported by both phonetic Russian layouts (although the standard Russian layout has Ч on QWERTY X...)!

The ч is romanized as č by all contestants, so conceptually it sits well on QWERTY X next to the C key. But that's a minor point.

I guess I should just stop worrying and accept that the two groups of Slavic languages need and want to do this differently. The Rulemak way for the easterners, the Bulmak way for the southerners. So be it, I guess.

[edit: What about other Cyrillic-using languages? Azerbaijani – where would that belong for instance?]

Last edited by DreymaR (27-Jan-2016 13:56:25)

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Finally, I got some layout images out of Linux! Here then, is the status quo of phonetic kyrillic Colemak layouts under DreymaR's Big Bag for xkb!

NOTE: As seen in the above, I understand that there are East Slavic (Russian/Church/Belarus/Ukraina?) and South Slavic (Bulgarian/ISO-9/Serbia(Cyrillic)/Macedonia?) main language groups (and some others, West and North). Does anyone know whether it'd be sensible to make layouts for Belarus(by), Ukraina(ua), Serbia(Cyrillic, rs) and Macedonia(mk) based on these two layouts (ru & bg) with some small changes if necessary? That'd be awesome! :-)

   Cmk-X-phon-ru.png
   The Colemak phonetic layout for Russian Kyrillic script – 'Rulemak' by user Ghen. New (2016) version.
   Based on KOI-8R, with the notable exception of ч for H because it's quite common and used in existing phonetic Russian layouts.

   Cmk-X-phon-bg.png
   The Colemak phonetic layout for Bulgarian Kyrillic script. 2016 version.
   NOTE: In Rulemak, the VK_102/LSGT key is combining acute; in Bulgarian Colemak it's combining grave. Makes some accented letters easy to type.

Last edited by DreymaR (13-Jun-2016 10:35:32)

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I've never understood a value of phonetic Russian layout before, assuming that йцукен layout is the best. It is really better designed for russian than qwerty for english, but still not ideal. Almost all high frequency russian letters are located under index fingers. Now, after learning touch-typing in colemak, I realized that йцукен seems not to be designed having touch-typing in mind, at least this is not a home row oriented design.
I tried rulemak and found it quite balanced for russian language, not ideal, but strangely enough the home row has better use in rulemak than in йцукен. 
The only thing I've missed in rulemak is the CapsLock as Backspace, I get used to use it in colemak layout and found very convenient (keeping in mind the number of typos I still doing). Could a version of rulemak with capslock as backspace be created? Thank you in advance.

Edit: The rulemak I installed is the Windows version provided by phly95. This one has missed "CapsLock as BackSpace" and I also found that it doesn't do remapping of "<" to ";" and ">" to ":" which was implemented by ghen at very early rulemak version. Also, the AltGr layer is completely screwed up. I'm going to switch to PKL version of rulemak.

Last edited by ckofy (02-Sep-2016 05:02:31)
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Rulemak is really good. I've tried it for 2 days, still thinking on each letter, but I see improving. I'm going to switch to rulemak from йцукен completely and use it in pair with colemak (while I never really touch-typed in йцукен and especially not in qwerty).
Now some  data why rulemak is good. Look to the chart of Russian language letter frequency:
russian_letter_freq.png
Data was taken from here
Don't you notice something familiar? Yes, indeed, the first eight most frequent letters in Russian are: О,Е,А,И,Н,Т,С,Р.
For people who don't know cyrillic (if they read this topic for some reason), these letters are equivalent of O,E,A,I,N,T,S,R or ARST NEIO.
Ok, enough drama, the home row of colemak is perfectly fits Russian, it fits it better than йцукен or dvorak or phonetic qwerty (dah!) or even better than the mysterious Diktor layout, which I, honestly, never seen that somebody been used. Diktor looks good in fact, but putting "У" in home position and "А" in between index fingers has no excuse. It was definitely designed under heavy influence of dvorak with its U in home position.
Then, talking about two-letter combinations in Russian, the data from the same resourse shows that first 25 most frequent bigrams are:
ст то но на по ен ни ко ра ов не ро пр ал го ре ос ли ка во ер та от ва ор
They mostly use home position letters with exception for п,в,к,л which are not in bad positions in fact.

Now about my own impression of using rulemak:
- Э is in weird position and although it is 30th in frequency by data, my impression that it is used quite often. But it is unlikely can be improved (on ANSI keyboard).
- З and Я worth to be closer to the middle, while Ж, Ф, Ц could be moved to the side. Я and З are under pinkies in йцукен as well, so this is not worst in rulemak, just could be better.
- Some awkward movements exist, what I remember is "за", stretching to й (while й in q position in йцукен is hardly better).
- I really like position of "ч", the "х" on the same button would be worse. "ь" is also good.

Overall, by my opinion it is worth using rulemak by native Russians in place of йцукен, I feel it quite comfortable as it is.  If go further and do some letters moving to improve position in top/bottom row, it can be ergonomic Russian layout.

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Thank you for interesting and encouraging insights! I hope your ventures with Colemak and Rulemak will prove fruitful and delightful to you.

ckofy said:

- Э is in weird position and although it is 30th in frequency by data, my impression that it is used quite often. But it is unlikely can be improved (on ANSI keyboard).
- З and Я worth to be closer to the middle, while Ж, Ф, Ц could be moved to the side. Я and З are under pinkies in йцукен as well, so this is not worst in rulemak, just could be better.
- Some awkward movements exist, what I remember is "за", stretching to й (while й in q position in йцукен is hardly better).
- I really like position of "ч", the "х" on the same button would be worse. "ь" is also good.

• I believe that Э got about what it deserves in Rulemak? If you want a slightly better deal for it, you might consider using a Wide mod? Then it falls on an index finger, albeit with a bit of a stretch. Anyway, it may be about typing style. If you're too tightly bound to your home position then consider developing a bit more "float" so your hands can reach further without any single finger having to stretch as much.
• The others, well, concessions had to be made for similarity with both Colemak (phonetically) and popular existing Russian layouts. If any of these are in a significantly too bad or good position, we can consider making a "Rulemak++" that's some steps further away from similarity but performs better for typing. The philosophy is to move fairly frequent keys that need it, and let rare keys be as they don't significantly impact performance (unless they figure in frequent n-grams).
• About the за (ZA) bigram: Yes, it's tricky. I'd use an Angle mod but it's tricky no matter what. If it's fairly frequent you can learn alternative fingering for it! With Angle mod, slide the hand so the ring finger hits A/а. Without, the ring finger should probably hit Z/з instead. (Incidentally, using the ANSI Angle-Z mod this problem vanishes!)

Best of luck! :-)

Last edited by DreymaR (31-Aug-2016 09:41:41)

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Regarding the Wide mod/Angle mod. I decided for myself to use "plain vanilla" colemak, but get rid of the standard keyboard (ANSI or ISO) instead. Staggered keyboard is the similarly obsolete typewriter era standard as the qwerty layout inself. I'm looking forward to get the ErgoDox Infinity I've ordered at Massdrop in May and start using it. This should resolve awkward movement where Angle mod helps.
I type only English and sometimes Russian, so I do not use any diacritic marks in my typing. I've learned about AltGr at this forum :)

Some more thoughts regarding rulemak. As it is designed now to mimic colemak as much as possible is the good "phonetic" layout and it has way less compromises than the qwerty phonetic layout. Talking about improving it by moving some keys, I think that can be done painlessly is to get rid of "qwerty" symbols in the numbers row and replace them with йцукен symbols (which russian users get used to use) and that will allow to take "?" out of its position (it will be in numbers row) and put Э there.
Then, I do not think that \ and / will be much missed at russian (rulemak already got rid of "\"), but "+" and "=" may be missed, so IMO the ъ should be moved to the previous э position and =+ been restored. Another possible key saving is to combine "," and "." in one key as they are in йцукен, while this is one of weaknesses of the russian windows layout, and I would still keep them separate.
On the other hand, "<" and ">" are really not used in russian, other useful symbols could be placed there, for instance the previously abandoned "/" and "\". Other symbols that are not used in russian layout are: `~@#$^&|<>[]{}
Edit: The rulemak I installed is the Windows version provided by phly95. This one doesn't do remapping of "<" to ";" and ">" to ":" which was implemented by ghen at very early rulemak version. ";" and ":" are perfect companions to "," and ".", so disregard my comment regarding "<" and ">".

Note that all that I mentioned do not affect latin letters positions, so the layout remains pretty much phonetic.
Talking about letters movement (if we look for more improvements), I would swap current positions of Я and Ф, З and Ц. That would resolve digrams ЗА,АЗ, and АЯ. The digrams ФА(347),ЦА(262) are way less frequent than ЗА(47),АЗ(74),АЯ(108). In braces is the relative position of bigram in the frequency list.

Last edited by ckofy (02-Sep-2016 05:08:10)
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The symbols is a bit of a tricky choice. I've abandoned the Norwegian symbol placements and gone for the standard US ones that the standard Colemak uses too. It helps, because many contexts expect easy access to the symbols that are easily accessible in the US layout (such as #`~@^$ etc). Especially for coding!

Should you use йцукен symbols or Colemak/US symbols then? Well, I'd say that symbols are tricky to remember so I'd go for either йцукен for both the latin Colemak and the Rulemak, or standard Colemak/US symbol placements for both. Otherwise it gets confusing I feel.

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I did my homework and red these two pages topic more attentively. I revoke my concerns regarding symbols, as I used Windows version of rulemak provided by phly95, and some symbols are messed up there (<> are still in the shift layer and the AltGr layer are messed up). Now I'm using the PKL version provided by ghen.
If chose between йцукен and qwerty symbols, the US placement should be taken because it is more relevant for computers. Cyrillic has no use for coding (except some exotic soviet era programming languages).

My only remaining concern is that I still think that letter "э" deserves better position (despite that "\" key is its position in яжерты phonetic layout).
My proposal is to put "?" in its йцукен position at Shift-7 and move "&" to AltGr (same story as for № - # pair). Then put "Ээ" to "/" position and move "/" to AltGr.("\" is already at AltGr). Any thoughts?

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I'm not saying that the Cyrillic layout will be used for coding, but that symbol placements should be as similar as possible to your latin layout (which may be used for symbol-demanding purposes even if you don't write code). :-)

Again, I don't think '\' is a bad key position! And I feel that the slash is much in use – surely that must be the case even in Cyrillic typing? In principle, I'd like to avoid putting letters too far into the symbol key positions as such, so it's easier to choose between the symbols setups you want (locale or US for instance).

My PKL files also hold a Rulemak implementation. I think it's the same as Ghen's, but it has Extend mappings and potentially better dead keys should you want that.

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Are you a native Russian speaker, ckofy?  In that case I'm quite proud that you're using and liking Rulemak. :-)  It was never intended for native users, but indeed it should be better than йцукен by just looking at letter frequencies...  If you consider it better than even a native "niche" layout like Diktor (which I did not really research because I wanted a Colemak based layout), Rulemak may actually be the best keyboard layout available for Russian today? :-)

Regarding Э, its letter frequency is about 0,32%, or once in every 30K 300 charakters.  I don't think it's wise to move the much more common ? to an awful position like Shift-7 for that...
If you have an ISO board, you could put Э on the extra key between Left Shift and Z/З instead.  I think I considered that for Rulemak, but I wanted it to be compatible with both ISO and ANSI keyboards (I mostly use ANSI keyboards myself), so I used the optional 102nd key for the dead accent ´ to indicate stress in syllables.

Last edited by ghen (02-Sep-2016 16:32:38)
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0.32% is once every 300 characters, not every 30k ;-)

Last edited by DreymaR (02-Sep-2016 16:29:22)

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Oops, I wonder how I got that wrong.  100/0.0033 :-S
Anyway, I think Shift+7 is hardly better a position than \.

The \ position still comes from the original KOI8 translit.

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