This is something I've been feeling for quite a while now: My middle and ring fingers naturally rest between the home-row (RS/EI) and upper row (WF/UY) keys! Hitting the upper-row keys on those fingers feels no harder at all than hitting their home-row counterparts. The index and little fingers have a harder time of it of course.

Sure, people have different finger lengths but I'm still thinking that this isn't something unique for me. It's probably helped a bit by my ergonomic mods which keep the wrists straight, but still. Is that QWERTY E key really that badly placed after all (by frequency - not talking about digraphs right now and I do think it's badly placed above the S key)? I'm thinking the answer may well be a big no for the majority of typers, which kinda throws a wrench into some of the argumentation found in the keyboard improvement community.

Most keyboard modeling efforts seem based on fairly conservative assumptions about the touch method. Like other good learning systems, the standard touch method is a decent enough way of getting started with touch typing but as people's skill grow they outgrow it. Alternative fingering "tricks" become desirable both for speed and comfort once your speed improves. They take a little extra learning but to become a really good typer you'll certainly find them worth it. And so the standard touch method falls by the wayside after serving you for a while - yet the modeling efforts I've seen so far have upheld it as the absolute law. Add to that the natural geometry of the hand as mentioned and it suddenly feels like a weak basis for keyboard layout improvement modeling!

Some digraphs like lk/nk/hn/jl and their reversed and left-hand counterparts aren't bad at all once you get used to sliding in! Not as nice as the best digraphs for sure but a lot better than one would expect if enforcing a rigid hand model! Again, this is helped by the length of the middle finger which the standard touch model seems to ignore completely.

One argument is that the advanced techniques are beyond many users. But the users that don't care for techniques are the users that might as well type on an alphabetic layout or at least stick to trusty old QWERTY. ;þ At the very least, some weight should be placed on the good typers and their techniques.

A really useful model would take into account the points above I feel. Anyone else thinking the same here? Or are there good arguments to prove me wrong?