This is an interesting discourse indeed! :-)
Agh, I don't like having even two DH-mod variants, let alone more (I don't think Dpg is good enough)! But I'm not happy about moving the M to the dethroned trench position, at the very least. M is a fairly common letter (≈2.6% in English, according to the Cornell page)! Regarding V I may be slightly swayed as I see that many have a different experience of it from mine (as I was very accustomed to the pure Angle mod beforehand). I do like the thought of keeping the not-too-common V (≈1.1%) just a little more out of the way.
It seems to me that the best mod in total may be DvbgHk on a staggered board. However, there's still the issue of non-staggered boards, which is irking. But at least, if we could harmonize the left side of the board something would be gained. My love of symmetry shouldn't get in the way of efficiency!
On the flip side of things... if I go to the step of moving K to the home row, M to the K, and H to the M position... that'll keep M in its original position when using a Wide mod! :-D Again, we have a key which would move by one standard but not by another, much like the V on the left hand. The cost is one more key moved, like in SteveP's current mod. But the benefit would be a better M position (on most boards) which it deserves.
On a staggered board at least, the Colemak K position really feels a lot better than the Colemak H position! And the M is a lot more common than K (2.6% vs 0.7%).
Might we after all be able to agree on a DvbgHmk mod as a common standard, you think? It'd be so awesome if we could sell one single DH-mod together.
q w F P B J L U Y ;
a R S T g K N E I O The Colemak-Curl(DvbgHmk) layout
z x c D V _ M H
q w F P B J L U Y ;
a R S T g K N E I O The Colemak-Curl(DvbgHmk) ANSI-Z layout
x c D V Z M H
SteveP said that this changes 3 right-hand keys from Colemak instead of 2. I think the more important point is changes from QWERTY. The above mod changes 3 keys from QWERTY positions (disregarding the Wide mod argument above), like SteveP's current mod does. That's one more than my current mod and two more than standard Colemak. I guess it's an acceptable price to pay for this mod, after all.
I do realize that matrix boarders would prefer M-in-the-middle. But after all they're a minority and I'm not sure the lower position is that bad on a matrix board – is it? Anyway, the benefits of having one main DH-mod would be tangible and if we mentioned variants of it as minor ones that'd be okay. That's how Tarmak works now: There's one Tarmak, and then some historical variants for the interested.
One somewhat ugly consequence of Dvbg is the splitting up of the XCV cut/copy/paste block, as repeatedly mentioned. What I'm primarily worried about with that, is Extend. With the plain Angle mod, Extend will just follow that. With this Angle-ZXCDV mod, the Extend cut/copy/paste keys should follow suit and it gets quite messy with the left mouse button between Copy and Paste. Argh. ;-)
Last edited by DreymaR (09-May-2017 16:37:45)