Hi! Welcome to the forums, and thanks for your interest and work!

I agree with you that keeping the main Colemak setup intact is a great benefit. I've worked from the standard Colemak myself, keeping everything the same in the normal and Shift states (apart from VK_102) and implementing all my other stuff in the AltGr states and the SwissCaps states only.

I feel that your layout isn't quite tidy enough? I wouldn't duplicate dead keys for instance. Keeping the standard Colemak's accent mappings isn't much of a point since I don't think they're very well known as they are and they don't strike me as perfect anyway. Instead, I use a Linux-like dead key scheme where almost all punctuation/number keys with AltGr are a dead key: The :; key for diaeresis/umlaut for instance, and all accent keys are their deadkeys with AltGr. However, in many programs you actually have to input the symbol without dead key and it's very annoying for coding so Shift+AltGr will give the symbol itself.

Sacrificing the dash for a macron dead key seems overmuch to me! I bet that'll annoy the hell out of a lot of users and not really be worth it? It'd certainly do me in!

I think that a national user needs a national layout, but at the same time it should be very minimalistically changed! That way you could change between the national layout you needed but in reality only change the mappings for a couple of keys! So I use all the punctuation like in the standard Colemak (ergo the US QWERTY). This helps compliance with a lot of program's hotkeys too, and is good for coding because otherwise you'll find yourself needing easy access to some key that your layout hides away too much.

I use the VK_102 for the most needed national symbol (in Norwegian, that's 'Ø'; in German, maybe 'ü' or 'ß'?). The next needed chars are on AltGr+[] (I use 'ä' and 'ü' there - or rather, the Norwegian 'æ' and 'å' which I believe play a similar role) and if more are needed (say, for a slavic language) I'd use the \| and /? keys too. In my experience, this is necessary for writing your non-English language a lot, and with my solution it flows well enough I think. New users may take a little while to get used to the AltGr mapping for a few keys but as long as the letters are rare it's really not a hassle.

You mention that the AltGr key is hard to hit because you have to twist your hand. This depends a bit on which keyboard you're using but generally speaking you have a point. However, I strongly recommend using a Wide ergonomic mod (see the last images in the linked topic) for any ISO keyboard because this will let you completely off the hook! Shorter distance to the Enter and Backspace keys are an added perk, and the changed key positions are so easy to learn that I even convinced my wife to use them (and she isn't into keyboard improvements at all).

I haven't finished my layout completely because I'm very ambitious about it - I want to be able to use it for not only Latin-based European languages but also Greek/Cyrillic, most African languages and IPA. But if you like you could check out what I have so far.

Hmmm... seems I didn't get through with all my messages. I'll probably have to show you what I mean by example. Unless I manage to prepare anything presentable for this forum, I may contact you personally instead to discuss the finer points further.

However, to make one or two things clear already:

- I too want to keep all the punctuation like in the US layout (and Colemak's recommendation)! That's not at all what I meant by a 'national layout'. What I envision is that only a few keys change between the various national layouts. In most cases, this will only have to be the VK_102, the AltGr mappings of the brackets and possibly one or two more keys as needed (such as the AltGr mappings of \| and maybe /? although I would like to use that one for a slash dead key). What I do with Norwegian chars is one layout where the brackets are on AltGr mappings (if you have to type a LOT in Norwegian and little coding) and one where the 'æ' and 'å' are on the AltGr mappings (this one I use exclusively since I do as much coding as Norwegian if not more) - but otherwise they're the same. It's easy to switch between the national-focused and coding/international-focused variant by hotkey like you say.

- I too want a common (Colemak) layout for most languages! You may be interested in reading the topic on character use frequency on this forum, or my files on the topic. Turns out Colemak works surprisingly well for all the European-based languages... in theory at least (and I believe it!). Seems to me it has an edge on Dvorak for instance, in that respect.

- I too use dead keys extensively. For some languages, you may have to rely on them because you need a lot of accents. However, in my and others' experiences typing your own language using dead keys more than very rarely gets quite disruptive. I need my 'æøå' letters nearby! The balance I struck was to use AltGr for the two rarest of them and a plain mapping for the most common. In use, this feels comfortable. Whenever I need to type a German or Swedish 'ä' for instance, my umlaut dead key is quite sufficient of course (especially since it's very accessible).

- So, I'll always keep rarely used characters and accents available by dead key. But in most non-English languages you'll also need a few extra characters and I think those should be kept easily accessible. The trick is to introduce this variation in as few mappings as possible, which I why I reserve only a few keys as variable "easy access" keys. Anyone could find the 'ø' on a dead key (slash-o), but a Norwegian user will also find it on the VK_102 key. A Slavic user will not have enough easy-access keys for everything, but will use the available keys for the most common characters and dead keys for the remainder.

- Your point of relearning this for each language is not a big one I think: It's only needed if you type a given language much, in which case you'll easily learn it for that particular language whenever you feel it's worth it over using the dead key mappings. If you don't want to learn the few variable key mappings for, say, French, that probably means you aren't typing a lot of French anyway.

- My AltGr mappings are IPA, and of course you'll need a lot of dead key usage if you want a full set but for most uses (like specifying a word pronounciation in Wikipedia) you'll do fine with mostly AltGr. Incidentially, the AltGr mapped symbols are also to a large extent needed for latin scripts (like 'ðþ', 'ß' etc). It's more of an IPA+Latin-Extended mapping really.

- I would never type any amount of Greek or Cyrillic using dead key mappings! That's not what I meant at all. I'm talking about additional shift states, which is somewhat akin to your layout switching but in my opinion more powerful. Tavultesoft's KeyMan has something similar.

In conclusion, I firmly believe in not messing with the generic typing experience. This is why doubling of spaces and similar tweaks are anathema to me. Dead keys are great, but they disrupt typing flow if you use them for anything but special glyphs and rarely needed characters.

As for the AltGr plus right-hand keys, my hands may be more dexterous because I've played musical instruments but I don't see any problem in hitting AltGr and certain right-hand keys at the same time! I have designed placements so that the less comfortable ones are rarely in use I think. AltGr with the apostrophe (for acute accent) or semicolon (for umlaut/diaeresis) keys for instance, is no trouble at all as far as my hands can tell. Your mileage may vary of course. I do feel that the Wide mod helped in this respect though. Whenever I need AltGr plus far-away right-hand keys I may help with the left hand, but those occasions should be rare so they don't affect overall speed.

Yeah, but most people don't want to run extra apps to compose stuff. Call us backwards.

What I do instead, is to comply with much of the compose combinations in my dead key mappings. A compose like Slash+o for 'ø' will instead be AltGr+slash then 'o' in Windows. Same basic combination, same number of keypresses. Composing is inherently more powerful than dead key mappings, but both get the job done if done right, I think.

Fixed? You mean you cannot for the life of you add, say, a Won symbol to a slash deadkey? Sounds too odd to believe.

At any rate, a lot of what I do with dead keys in my Windows layout can be reproduced by adding composes on *nix systems. And that's the "right" way to do it in accordance with the *nix paradigm I guess; I'll probably run into a lot of collision trouble I fear, but that's a worry for another day.

You can easily add your own compose sequences and dead keys on X11, too (actually, they are implemented the same way).  Look here for an example how I added Colemak's Altgr+\ special characters on Unix (by mapping Altgr+\ to an unused character first).