Incidentally, I meant to comment on Phynnboi's ASERTH earlier. I like the layout, though it does change 16 keys from QWERTY, which is only one less than Colemak... Maybe it's easier to learn, but if I were changing that much, I might just bite the bullet, switch to Colemak, and not try to preserve so much QWERTiosity.
Cheers,
Sy
It changes a lot of keys, but, at least in my experience, you really only have to adjust, not learn, and really only to half of them. The keys that moved from top to home fell into place almost instantly--the keys that moved from home to top were the hard ones. Plus, none of your short-cut keys will move very far from where you're used to. Plus, if you ever want to go back to Qwerty, it's really similar to Aserth. :) Colemak is a better layout, but it'll take you a lot longer to get up to speed with.
FWIW, I'm currently experimenting with a minimally non-QWERTY keyboard layout that I call QWERFY+. Basically it just involves taking QWERTY and swapping F<->T, and also J<->N, which feel like two swaps with big gains, and were suggested above by Phynboi. T is the second most common letter, and moving it to the F position eliminates an awkward reach that involves moving the whole hand. N is the 6th most common letter, and swapping it with the rarely used J puts it right next to the U, I and O keys with which it often appears in combination.
So, QWERFY+:
QWER F Y UIOP
ASDT G H NKL;
ZXCV B J M,./I left the E where it is this time to avoid overloading the right middle finger. Plus I find in its QWERTY position it's actually pretty quick to type the common bigrams with ER, RE, ED, DE, TE and ET. And this arrangement feels like it's easy to learn since no keys move to a different finger. I didn't add Phynboi's R<->; suggestion since I think it's wrong to overload the right pinky which already has so much else to do.
This arrangement of course has many common keys on the top row and so won't satisfy purists...
Cheers!
Sy
Let us know how it goes.
Working on it...
The problem I'm having is that as soon as you make a couple of changes to the keyboard, the temptation to make "just one more change" is almost irresistible! I'd like to move that R, and maybe the E, and before you know it you've got Colemak...
I seem to keep coming to the uncomfortable conclusion that the only keyboard layout I can truly justify learning touch typing on is QWERTY. Once you move away from that, there are dozens of options with different pros and cons, but no clear winner, when you consider all the factors.
Anyone else have this problem?
Sy
I think that QWERTY may be better for you. Once you have been using it for some time you may want an ergonomic alternative. On the other hand you may be quite happy with it. I touch typed QWERTY for about eighteen years with no ill effects. Since learning Colemak nine months ago, I've not missed it at all, and typing is really enjoyable again. YMMV. Good luck whatever layout you go for.
"It is an undoubted truth, that the less one has to do, the less time one finds to do it in." - Earl of Chesterfield
Well, if you can't touch type anything yet, I'd definitely recommend straight Qwerty at first. Pretty much every keyboard you sit down at is going to be Qwerty, so you definitely want to be useful on that. It's a bit like the C programming language: It ain't pretty, but it gets the job done and you can use it everywhere. :)
Here's a nice-feeling layout that changes only 12 keys from Qwerty:
qwlr f y kijp
nsdt g u eaoh
zxcv b ; m,./That's probably still more change than you wanted, but it's 5 less keys to learn than Colemak, yet is very competitive with it. :)