You're welcome. ;)

(You can direct new, curious users to this thread.)

I was messing around, trying to make a good layout that keeps keys in their QWERTY positions. As I continued to refine it, I ended up with a layout that looks almost exactly like Colemak. So I decided to make this guide: why is Colemak the best?

POSSIBLE IMPROVEMENTS (in the words of various people from forum.colemak.com, paraphrased; also in my words)

C is common. Why is it on the bottom row?
https://forum.colemak.com/viewtopic.php?id=246
C can't go with anything but S because it increases same finger by too much. C and F could switch, but that makes ctrl-C harder, and it's a small improvement anyway.

G is more common than P. How come P is in a harder to reach position?
https://forum.colemak.com/viewtopic.php?id=362
"* Even though the distance to hit the G key is greater, hitting the P key is a bit awkward, because it involves curving back the index finger.
* G hasn't been moved horizontally (like B and H that have been kept in place) to mark on each row the edge between the left hand and the right hand to help in learning the keyboard layout. It slightly helps to mentally separate the right hand keys and the left hand keys for those people coming from QWERTY.
* As a bonus, P keeps the same position as on the Dvorak keyboard layout. Only the A, M, P and the number keys are the same on Dvorak and Colemak.
* G is most of the time preceded and followed with a character from the right hand, so even though it takes slightly longer to reach the G key, there is usually more time to prepare for it.
* But the main consideration was that the PT/TP same-finger digraph is much more comfortable the way it is on Colemak, than if P and G were to be switched. The GT/TG digraph is much less frequent." -Shai

How come U is moved over? Why not leave it in its original position?
(see link above)
"The index finger needs to hit 6 keys, and putting the U there with 5 other keys would increase the same-finger way too much.  If you'll mix the U with 5 other consonants it will make the same-finger really high; and you can't put other vowels there because all the other vowels need to be in the home position." -Shai

Why is B still in that difficult position? It's the hardest position to reach, and B is not that rare. Why not swap it with Q?
(see link above)
That would be moving 2 extra keys, and make it that much harder to learn. Some people think that rare keys are the hardest to learn, so the rare keys should be left in place. Also, that would mess up the cmd-Q shortcut on Macs.

Why not leave G in its original position, put D in the QWERTY R position, and put P in the QWERTY T position?
https://forum.colemak.com/viewtopic.php?id=515
This puts D in an uncomfortable position where the finger has to curl back to reach it. There is something like this that would be good though:

"As mentioned in the wrist strain thread, I wouldn't put d on qwerty-r, rather on qwerty-e.  Thus:


q w d f p ...

a r s t g ...


This is essentially the polygon connecting Colemak d-f-p-g rotated one unit clockwise.  qwerty-e and qwerty-i positions are very easy to strike (I would call them virtual home), because of the long middle finger.   d is the most frequent letter among d-f-p-g, and it stands to reason that it should get the easiest strike.  The other three also get positions corresponding to their frequency, with the least frequent p getting the worst spot.  I really couldn't find a downside to this rotation after keeping at it for many days.

A bonus is this strengthens the claim that the layout that is easy to migrate to from Qwerty, since g stays put, and d and f stay on the same hand, same finger, moving only a row up." -ds26gte

Colemak doesn't do the above. The only problem with it is that it increases same finger a bit. So it's a minor improvement. Also, it puts F, a fairly common letter, in a tricky position.

How come S and R are not switched?

That would make it easier to learn, but it would increase same finger with FR, CR, and to a lesser extent, SW. To fix that, F and/or C would have to move, making it harder to learn and making ctrl-C harder.

I used to use Dvorak. I liked the placement of the punctuation. Why doesn't Colemak have that?
https://forum.colemak.com/viewtopic.php?id=90

Colemak can't be the best. It has restrictions: ZXCV are kept in place, and a bunch of keys are kept in their QWERTY positions. I don't care about that. What should I do?
https://forum.colemak.com/viewtopic.php?id=196

In my experience, Colemak is the best there is. I've used five different layouts. It's difficult to compare them because some of them are so close, but Colemak is probably my favorite. Not only does it keep it easy to learn and use, it's also really good. I've never come across a better layout, or at least not a significantly better one. First and foremost, Colemak is fast and good. It also tries to remain easy to learn whenever possible.

The punctuation is actually pretty rare. It's a waste to put relatively rare keys in such good spots. Maybe it feels good, but in exchange, you must place more common keys in a harder-to-reach spot, and that won't feel good.

Also, the way it is, more keys remain in their QWERTY positions.

And on an unrelated note, here's a quote by DreymaR:
"But go ahead, knock yourself out looking for your keyboard "grail", and have fun in the grueling process. I did, as several others here have.  :)  Then I stopped, and went Colemak because that's way better researched than anything I could throw together and works so well in all areas I can think of (and from the looks of it, the gross majority of other contenders I've seen around here). Haven't regretted it once."

I'm still doing that, but in the meantime, I'll vouch for Colemak. It's the best on the market at this time, and I think it has the best chance of taking over QWERTY as the dominant layout.

(If I missed anything, please let me know.)