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Hey everybody. I've been a user of colemak for several years now, and I absolutely love it. Recently I've been looking into one handed layouts, cause I thought it'd be cool (and in some cases practical) to be able to type with just one hand. After messing around with dvorak for left hand for a couple of days I was kind of disappointed with it, and I thought "I could totally do better than this". My new keyboard layout is based off of DFLH, but I made several changes that I believe are more intuitive to a colemak user and make typing with one hand easier.
Some important things to note:
1. This layout preserves the ZXCV cluster (like colemak) that makes it easy to do common shortcuts.
2. Dvorak's original left handed layout places the left parenthesis on the 9 key and the right parenthesis on the 0 key, but this layout preserves the parenthesis read order.
3. Right alt is pushed by the thumb and and acts as a shift key. I found it too bothersome to use sticky shift.
4. Colemak users will be familiar with the "ST" roll. Pushing "S" with my index finger was the hardest part of getting used to DFLH, so I opted to place these two keys together in my layout.
5. "ING" ending can be stroked in one roll. Hooray!
6. I tried to keep the keys on the colemak layout in the same position relative to the home row (ie. F, P, L, and J are all above the home row) for this layout. In fact, the only consonants that violate this rule in are M, H, B, G, and N.
7. Like Colemak, the layout uses Caps Lock as a Backspace key.
I use an autohotkey hotkey (with RCTRL + Space) to switch between my colemak layout and STREAK. It actually used to be RALT and space, but I found that created problems with Colemak getting stuck with shift pressed when switching.
Here is a download to my AHK script to change layouts.
Make sure to compile the script and put the .exe file in your startup folder if you want it to run on startup. You may want to change the call value in the fourth line of this script if it doesn't match your layout. By default, I've put the call value for Colemak at "a0000409", and the call value for STREAK at "a0010409", which are the default values my system used when I installed the two layouts. If you're not sure, go to regedit, "Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Keyboard Layouts\" and find the layout that you're using and use the key name that comes with it. You can also change the hotkey that you use to switch layouts by editing the 7th line. See https://www.autohotkey.com/docs/KeyList.htm.
If you have any suggestions for any improvements to the layout, I'll be happy to hear them!