I don't agree that the B]# keys are not "useful keys"! They're just slightly awkward, so they can hold less important stuff.

And I don't see any problems with the Shift keys?

I think you may be a little too focused on staying put. I use the hard Enter key easily enough for instance, in addition to the Extend Enter. It's what most people do and it isn't really hard.

Maybe you have weak pinkys compared to my piano-trained ones? :-)

At any rate, the Shift keys are still nearly 1.5 keys away from home position so it's not about the distance for sure. Same with QWERTY B.

Actually, the Shift distance is indeed less than 1.5 keys if done right. Instead of trying to model this, I observed my fingers in action. My home position using Curl has the pinkies resting at the lower edge of their home keys. When hitting Shift, they both stretch to the corner of their respective Shift keys. This distance is 2.5 cm, on a board with horizontal key distance of 2.0 cm. In conclusion, it's important to not measure by modeling but by actual typing.

I do enjoy using the Wide mod which reduces the distance to RShift by one key. But I still use the ISO LShift gleefully. ANSI users are often skeptical to it, but it's no further away than the normal RShift position.

But yeah, why on earth couldn't they make us a split Space bar by default. I'd like one that has two extra normal-size keys in the middle, and the rest are two double-or-whatever-is-left-sized Space keys. Pretty much like the JIS/Japanese keyboard, in other words, just a little differently arranged.

   
    Japanese/JIS keyboard physical layout

Yeah, I'd enjoy the split RShift too I'm sure, although for safety I'd have it at least 1.5 key widths. Maybe the split Back as well. Lots of nice keys there, yummy!

The only thing that's sad is you considering a key that's less than one key distance away de facto, ludicrously awful. ;-)

Hey Steve99, I sort of went overboard with that concept when I revisited your many inquiries to me regarding considering the extended  or wide layout. I went to the extreme with my Planck layout and pushed the home row right to the edges of the keyboard eliminating the pinkie finger extension completely. There remains only one awkward key extension, the "?" in the center column but thus far, it "feels" like the benefits of the additional hand separation are worthwhile. Thumbs naturally land over the Space and Enter keys which double as Shift keys when held down.

The outer keys are modifiers when held down and can toggle layers (num) right hand number keypad cluster (sym) left hand symbol cluster. The "A" and "O" keys at present don't have modifier assignments at present because typing on the home row is inherently faster than on other rows, just enough to trigger the modifier code of the firmware which I have yet to tweak.

EDIT: Updated layout with center column symbols -, =, /, ~ moved to shift layers and outer modifiers moved to center columns. No extended index finger reach now with the symbols easily and comfortably accessible via the thumb activated layers.

I like it.  I have previously wondered if the Planck is a bit confined, since it is one fixed unit. But this would mitigate that issue nicely.

I think I'd even be willing have symbols like - = + /  in a separate layer, perhaps reserving those central spaces for rare modifiers, e.g. Gui.

Would be nice if there were a version of the Planck with two extra columns, then you could still have the greater separation, without losing the outer column. Or a split version.

How do you find using your thumb on the small keys along bottom row?

Yes. Shift keys are in a bad location.

I've actually started a new thread regarding the idea of remapping Shift to Alt. The Alt keys are in a much better location as they can both be pressed by the Thumbs

https://forum.colemak.com/topic/2198-re … ft-to-alt/

The frequencies for both keys are quite rare (wikipedia data):
B:  1.492%
V:  0.978%
I think you are right that bottom-row key is a little better (esp on your planck), and B is clearly the more common letter. But since they are both small frequencies, I don't think it matters enough to change it. The frequencies above also don't take into account paste operations. If you copy/paste a lot perhaps that would make a difference? Personally I'd keep V on the bottom just to have XCV on the bottom row, but if it works for you that way, all to the good!

Edit: In a similar vein, you could argue for switching F with C also. But I don't think that would be worthwhile either!

Steve99, I took your suggestions and used the center column for modifiers only -- creating a more defined split layout. No more index finger extensions. I updated the layout in my original post and added Shift layers (versus just defining a modifier key) which allowed mapping the previous center column symbols to the "comma" and  "dot" positions, as shown here..

The "minus" and "underscore" now occupy the opposite Shift key position (not being held down). Not shown, is the layer the Tab key raises for Home, PgDn, etc. which has the remaining =, + in the  "comma" and  "dot" positions (though they are also redundantly defined in my number and symbol layers). Entering varaible names with hyphens and underscores, and path names is now ridiculously easy.

And losing the outer modifiers on the edge letters eliminated the occassional unintended modifier being triggering when typing fast -- a firmware timing issue I don't need to mess around with now! All in all, in the very short time I have had this new layout, it works spectacularly well for me. Home row heaven! Thanks for the suggestion!