Hi Dreymar, just ignore the graphics when they disturb you and the information feels to massive.

This post is meant as information for anyone looking to optimize comfort and have full compatibility in that sense that typing on a standard and split (columnar) ergo  keyboard can be used in exact the same ergonomic way. Then this person should read the article to understand the concept. All others can just ignore my post. I am just trying to offer a new idea to the Colemak users, which I think can be beneficial for many.

To your points:

- I am not a Colemak specialist as you might have observed, so the name might be wrong. But you and everybody will know what I mean. I will call the extra layer-key  "extend" in the future. I never heard of "extended" used on macOS in reference to AltGr, but have not been using a Mac for many years. I did not find that term via a relevant search btw.

Not sure what you mean here? I only mentioned that I use one-shot for layers -- only for alphanumeric btw. -- so for typing.

-  I find it total irrelevant who came up with which idea first. Mostly we will never know and likely different people had the same idea at different locations. For example using the hand in what you call "angle mod" has been done for forever. When I learned touch typing back in the days a classmate argued with the teacher that the traditional fingering we were taught does not feel comfortable and she therefore typed with another hand position ("wide-angle"). Many others use a mix between traditional and wide-angle fingering or come up with other more or less crude finger positions. ;-)

I took the time to explain the Anymak approach in the article in the aim it might benefit others as it helped me. I do not care if others want to use it. It is just a friendly offer for anyone who thinks he can benefit from my thoughts and experiences. What is new in that approach? To my knowledge that is the following:

a) my approach allows to use exactly the same finger positions on standard and ergo keyboards. From what I see that is not the case for Colemak or Colemak DH, except for Colemak DH used on an ISO-board. Many need to use an ANSI style keyboard and for that my solution works as well. That is a key feature for me, because I still need to use my laptop regularly.

b) Both shift and symbol layer have dedicated layer keys, which are both symmetrical and also easier to reach than for all/ most of the alternative layouts which normally do only consider the alpha-keys, but not the needed layer-keys. I find that a big miss only to optimize for the alpha-keys.

The following are not new as such, but

c)  a great side-effect is that the new placement of the Shift-key works exceptionally well with bottom-row mods for the 3 other needed modifiers Win (OS), Alt, Ctrl.

d) keeping common practices like using the pinky for Shift can make it a bit quicker to learn and adapt.

AKL?

You refer to the graphic? That is just an illustration. For me Colemak and Colemak DH are similar enough (with or without angle-mod/cheat or whatever left-hand-bottom-row-fingering you use) that I as a non Colemak user do not care. The problem side of Colemak is the right hand, as I experienced myself. Sure there is a fingering for the specific Colemak variant which is a tad better for the left bottom-row, but in the larger picture and the context here I do not look at that aspect. Of course a Colemak user will and should do that!

Indeed the B-key position on a standard keyboard should not be used when you want better ergonomics and the compatibility in the sense I explained. What you put on that   key-position is up to the user. Not relevant for the Anymak concept. You can leave it unused or assign a macro, PrintScr or whatever fits your bill ;-)

I hope the aim of my post is clear now. :)

EDIT: I edited the original post in the hope to make it as clear as possible.

Thanks DreymaR. Indeed many wishes / ideas we have are similar. I did not perceive your post as harsh. Like I said it is just an offer to anyone who might think he possibly can benefit from my experience. As you know it takes a lot of time to collect and share information in a way others can follow, but I thought in that way I possibly can give something to the AKL, as you name it :-)