It looks like places priority on the top row, but it seems like the fingers have to do a lot of flying around also. I've also noticed that the placement of letters also diminishes the amount of rolls that the layout has. I don't know it seems that to learn a whole new layout, if I want to avoid the home row, I'd just use QWERTY...XP

Yeah, priority is on the top row.

I basically threw the layout together overnight and didn't spend much time thinking about optimisation. I'm also not so sure about rolls because the way I do rolls they're easier going outwards but it seems the consensus is that inward rolls are better, while I find they're awkward. I don't think anyone considers hand alternation to be bad, so I figure it's better to go for the centre ground than overoptimise in one way that's unoptimal for some people.

It took me roughly ~1 week to learn Colemak, ~2 to learn Dvorak. Learning a new layout isn't a big deal.

thought about having the pinkies on the middle row, didn't fit my hand though. with the arm angle I wanted and my hands pinky on hte top row worked better. It might be different for people with different hands. Pinky on the middle row I find works OK if the keyboard is on the desk, but if it's on the desk might as well get a split keyboard or something more ergonomic. Where you can't is a laptop actually on your lap, and for that I felt top row pinky was best. I tried getting more important characers in the centre (also advantageous if you want to do one handed typing) so it should still work alright if someone has different hands where the pinky placement is more comfortable in  a different place.

I've recently returned to Qwerty and have found it to feel BETTER than the home-row focused layout I was using (Aserth, mentioned in another thread).  I'm starting to wonder if maybe Qwerty got it right by putting so many common letters on the top row--E, I, and O, in particular.  As I mentioned before, with the index and pinkie fingers on the home row, it's most natural for the middle and ring fingers to rest on the top row, so it stands to reason that reaching up with those fingers isn't going to be too straining.  Another thing I've noticed is that home-row focused layouts tend to feel cramped, whereas Qwerty tends to feel open.  I wonder is if this is why alternative layouts don't tend to offer much speed increase over Qwerty--they're more efficient distance-wise, but "pay the piper" by forcing the fingers to remain in a bunched-up and unnatural position.

Something to think about, anyway.  Maybe I'll retool my layout-maker program with these ideas and see how the resultant layouts feel.

It's nothing to do with muscle memory. The problem is that keyboard layouts that are tightly bound to the home row, such as Dvorak and Colemak, force your hands together and put extra strain on your wrists. Admittedly not everybody finds this to be a problem, but I do, and it seems I'm far from being the only one.

Personally, I've repeatedly (on several attempts over a year and a half) found Colemak so uncomfortable on my laptop that I've had to stop using it altogether. However, in combination with a split ergonomic keyboard it's about the closest thing to typing perfection that you're going to get. If it were merely a case of muscle memory, I'd find the same problems with both.

Simon, I did say "Admittedly not everybody finds this to be a problem, but I do, and it seems I'm far from being the only one."

I have, but it just felt more awkward. But that's why I prefer ergonomic keyboards.

Oh, and here's a web page with a couple of diagrams that illustrate what I'm talking about.

Thanks for the link -- it actually illustrates my point even better than mine does. If you look at the images of the "correct" position, you'll see that the fingers don't all naturally rest on the home row. Three of them do, but the natural resting position for the index fingers there is on the bottom row, and that's exactly the point I was making. It's the need to compensate for this fact that either (a) causes your wrists to twist inwards, or (b) causes a lot more finger (and wrist) movement to stretch (on Colemak) for the four very common letters T, D, H and N, which together constitute about 23% of letter usage in English.

The picture does show that the ergonomic keyboard is a bit better in this regard. It's a bit unfortunate that it doesn't also show the new Microsoft Natural Ergo 4000, because it is even more closely contoured to your hands, allowing for the fact that your middle and ring fingers are longer and would otherwise tend to overshoot the home row.

Okay, so we've established that some people do not have a problem with a tight focus on the home row. Nobody is disputing that. However, some of us do have problems with it, and being dismissive of our concerns is not helpful. For my part, I get a lot of discomfort within three weeks to a month or so when I try to use Colemak on a laptop -- I have attempted this on at least three separate occasions over the past 18 months, I found the same result every time, and on one occasion it even started to interfere with other activities such as driving. And the problem is in my right wrist and forearm, not in my fingertips. That is why I recommend that Colemak should be used in conjunction with an ergonomic keyboard.

That is also why I think that migo's concept layout is a step in the right direction: it makes it easier to keep your wrists straight on a conventional keyboard. The article that Simon linked to above illustrates this point perfectly. Now migo's layout may not be perfect, and certain issues, such as long stretches to the bottom row, may need to be addressed in more detail, but the idea is certainly worth considering and I think it could well get somewhere if taken seriously and some solution to these problems could be found.

So... has anyone any suggestions on how we can improve on it?

I think Jammy is absolutely right: Some could be in need of a better alternative than the usual board, since they need more angle than the standard solution will readily allow them. This could have to do with how big you are versus your keyboard width, for instance. Key sizes don't vary a lot in general, so we're left with angles. I think that a hinged or curved ergo board should alleviate these user's problems.

So we're left with the laptop problem. Interesting indeed. Seems the main alternatives revolve around either resting the two middle fingers on the top row or the index fingers on the bottom row. Not sure which of those would be best, really. If your layout lets you do most your typing on the home row and not much on the top row like QWERTY (and Dvorak?) does, I think I'd go for the index-fingers-at-bottom-row variant. If your fingers rest on the top row I think you'll have some rather awkward stretches downwards, whereas the top row should be fairly easily reached even if your index fingers are a little further away from it in their home position.

I think that common letters should then be in the Colemak K and V (my B) positions. The V isn't so uncommon (and I think you'd actually reach the B more easily from this position?), and I'd suggest simply keeping the N in its' QWERTY place to put something both common and familiar under your fingertip! The K should move up somewhere then, and something fairly common down; maybe L or G? If the N/K/L shuffle is done this way, that'd have the benefit of being fairly close both to the normal Colemak and the QWERTY, and also you wouldn't break any of the digraphs Shai probably thought of while making Colemak.

Just a suggestion. It'd probably make G and J quite hard to reach, but nothing comes without a price. And the modifier keys would be easily reachable which I think is nice on a laptop where I tend to use any and all hotkey possibilities with zeal.

Another thing to do is that bottom-row shift I keep harping on about. Now, I realize that not all people have a 102/105-key board and I've seen some solutions for that. But I'm starting to lean towards recommending that the Z goes to the Shift key on a 101/104-key board! It'll look a bit dominating there, but that'd be the most logical place if you do a shifted bottom half row. Then the Shift key itself would naturally migrate up to CapsLock I think. Yes, having a Backspace there is nice and all, but I still think this might be the way to go if you're in search of a better wrist angle.

|Tab+?|  Q  |  W  |  F  |  P  |  G  |  J  |  K  |  U  |  Y  |  ;  |
|Shift | *A* | *R* | *S* |  T  |  D  |  H  |  L  | *E* | *I* | *O* |
|    Z   |  X  |  C  | *V* | *B* |  _  | *N* | *M* |  ,  |  .  |  /  |

Seems to me that the index fingers would naturally rest between the V/B and N/M keys, as shown?

I have the CapsLock as my Extra Modifier key ('Extend') in PKL, and love that. To get a CapsLock, I'll type CapsLock and the grave/tilde key. To get a Backspace or Delete, it's the ';' or ']' keys. I'm starting to get addicted to that kind of functionality. Even though typing, say, Enter or BS/Del is one more key press this way, that doesn't feel awkward because both the keys pressed are right under my home position. In a way, I feel that the extra press is compensated by not having to move from home.

I suppose that if the CapsLock key does become a Shift, it shouldn't also be an extra modifier; that'd cause trouble. Then it's the Tab key that's next in line. I'd make the Tab my PKL ExMod/Extend key, and I've already found that using the 'T' key for Tab works fine nearly everywhere! For instance, now I can hit CapsLock/A/T to Alt-Tab without leaving my home position. Using the Tab key instead of CapsLock would be somewhat more awkward I fear, but maybe it'd be okay.

@DreymaR: Your rearrangement of the right hand keys looks pretty promising. I must admit that the stretch for the L key is probably the thing I find most uncomfortable on Colemak, even on an ergonomic keyboard. It would also probably make things a good bit easier from a wrist angle perspective.