Spasiba!  :)

I made an attempt, but this is from a non-Russian so I may have done mistakes. Basically, I found the AZHERTY a place to start and went by transliterations. The Colemak was my basis, of course.

I got the same impression as you did: The standard layouts that exist are far from perfect. The jungle of layouts attests to this.

In Windows you have the interesting option of mapping a CapsLock state. What this means is that when I press CapsLock I can be typing Cyrillic. CapsLock again, and I'm back to the usual characters. Of course, layout selection can be hotkeyed but I think it's rather nifty.

Getting a fully optimized ergonomical layout is for the native Russians. I wouldn't worry about it, and would think that multilingual users are better served by simply transliterating what they're used to.

If you're interested in what I did, you'll find it in the .doc file in my Norwegian layout download at http://folk.uio.no/obech/Files/Keyboard … olemak.zip (if you're having trouble with the MS-Word doc, let me know and I'll upload an .rtf instead - I've just been to lazy/busy to do it yet). There's lots of columns in there and you'll see that I put the whole Cyrillic alphabet on a dead key(!) but the principle is the same as a normal mapping. Some characters had to go to different columns, but unless I'm mistaken most of them are fairly rare and/or belong to non-Russian Cyrillic scripts.

I use the Cyrillic alphabet very rarely as you can imagine, mostly for song lyrics.

Best of luck, and if you find something interesting then keep us posted!

I type in Russian occasionally and I am fine with using the transliterated Russian keyboard that fits my Colemak keyboard. I even have the installation file that I found on some college student's website a few years ago. I am not very concerned about comfort since I don't type using that layout as often. Plus I am very fast with it without having to learn a new layout since ARST is АРСТ and I can flip layouts with just a keyboard shortcut.

For now, I'd think the chances of "official" are slim. The Colemak layout was researched for use with English and so creating additional variants like this might come under criticism. More importantly, I don't think that Shai has time to maintain several variants. That's just for now though - if things settle down and become popular I'm sure something like that would have the right to be seen.  :)

In my experience, a great many of the national layouts are crap. No idea whether that applies to the Bulgarian one or not, but be warned.

I have no problems typing A - it's whatever takes the pinky away from its' home position that causes me trouble. And I'm not sure the pinky is your weakest finger when it comes to typing - the ring finger may have more strength per se but that doesn't help it much since it's usually the least independent finger so it stresses more and is harder to use right.

When it comes to same-hand, it's largely a question of whether you can do it with rolls or not. The worst situation may be if you have to roll a bit in one direction and then turn - like in Colemak 'rats'.

Zaratustra Zaratustra Zaratustra Zaratustra - ugh.  :)

After using it a few months myself, I have now finalized my Russian layout.  With this layout I can type Russian rather fluently and without thinking, as you mostly just type transliterated Russian:

Ъ 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 - Ь
   Я В Ф П Г Й Л У Ы Ю Ш Щ Э
    А Р С Т Д Ч Н Е И О Ё
   ' З Х Ц Ж Б К М , . /

I considered swapping ь and ё, since ь is more common, but I preferred to keep the layout logically organized: ё (yo) phonetically next to о, and ь symmetric wrt. ъ, since the goal was to create an "easy to remember" layout for Colemak users rather than a fully optimized layout (for that, ь would have to be moved elsewhere anyway due to the rather common -шь in verb endings).  The rest is mostly phonetic.  Key 102 (next to z/з) is Unicode character U+0301, the accent used to indicate stress (important for correct pronounciation), as seen in Russian dictionaries.

Additionally, # (above 3) is replaced by the Russian number sign №.  # itself is available through AltGr-3.  Russian quotes «» are available through AltGr-[], like in Colemak, and [] are available through AltrGr-().  Because ;: are missing, I placed them on <> (logically on Shift-,.), and <> are available through AltGr.  On the letter keys, AltGr yields the corresponding Latin character from the Colemak layout.  Same for missing characters '"\|{}=+.

I called the layout "Rulemak", for "Russian Colemak".  "Tsolemak" would be an option too: if you enter "colemak" on this layout you get "цолемак", which in turn can be transliterated as "Tsolemak". :-) (similarly, the Qwerty-phonetic layout is often called "Yawerty", from "яверты")

PKL (for Windows) and xkb (for UNIX) implementations are available for those interested.

I just use the phonetic colemak variant for Bulgarian.

Here's my Bulmak

ч 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 - =
я в ф п г й л у ъ ; ш щ ю
а р с т д х н е и о '
з ь ц ж б к м , . /

Comfortable :)

Here is the .dll file for windows. (.msi installer included)

I hope you/we could agree on a Cyrillic layout, so there isn't one Ghoul layout and one Ghen one and so on - but it's hard to do. Fortunately, most of the letters are agreed on - and all the most common ones too I hope. When it comes to local variations such as Russian versus Bulgarian I'd hope that these could be contained to a few keys. I've decided to use the '[', ']' and VK_102 keys for such local variants whenever I make a local layout. If I want a more compliant layout I only use the '[' and ']' keys with AltGr and put the most common local glyph on the VK_102 key. If you're using a keyboard in a country that needs extra glyphs, it will have the VK_102 key (or more!). It is still my belief that people in underdeveloped countries who don't use a VK_102 key should get themselves a better keyboard.  ;)

I'd place the 'yo' on the '[' key. That way it doesn't occupy prime real estate, and it's phonetically analogous to the 'å' which sits there in Nordic layouts (including even mine!). (My ']' key holds the 'æ' - or 'ä' if you're Swedish/German/whatever, and the VK_102 holds 'ø'/'ö'. I really wish that the Nordic-Germanic countries could reform and start using 'ā' and 'ō' instead of different and inconvenient letters, but that's not going to happen soon I guess...)

Здравствуйте! :-)

You can find it here.  Create a "rulemak" subdir in your PKL layouts dir, and put my rulemak.pkl there as "layout.ini".  You can put rulemak.ico there as "on.ico" and copy "off.ico" from the colemak layout dir.
If you want to move some keys in the layout, it's easy to do as the file is just plain text.

I put the following in pkl.ini to switch between Colemak/Rulemak by pressing both Control keys:

; The layout ini file is "layouts/[key value]/layout.ini"
; You can use multiple layouts, if you write:
;     layout = layout1:Displayed name,layout2
layout = Colemak,Rulemak

; With this hotkey you can switch between layouts
changeLayoutHotkey = LCtrl & RCtrl,RCtrl & LCtrl

As PKL basically re-loads when you switch layouts, you can make changes to the layout on the fly.  However on an idle PC, switching layouts can take a while (disk spinning up and seeking), and you get Qwerty in the meanwhile. :-)

However I made all Latin letters available on their Colemak positions through AltGr, so no need to completely switch layouts if you just need to type one or two words.

I don't have any, but you could use any existing Russian typing tutor program that doesn't mess with they keyboard itself?

I agree on ё being too rare, but I settled on another solution: ь on ', ъ on ` and ё on =.

This is easy to remember because ь and ъ are related like ' and ` are (plus this is also commonly used in other transliteration schemes), and it still keeps ё physically near the е/о vowels.

I've implemented it this way in my xkb and pkl files.  Hopefully this is now the final rulemak layout. ;-)

ъ 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 - ё
   я в ф п г й л у ы ю ш щ э
    а р с т д ч н е и о ь
   ' з х ц ж б к м , . /

Here's an image of the Rulemak layout:

(generated with carpalx, hacked a bit to cope with non-ascii characters)

As you have seen, I too have been moving these around initially, but the reasons I settled on what I did were:
- ё close to phonetically related е and о
- related ъ and ь on similarly related ` and '
- ъ and ь are also commonly transliterated as ` and ', and transliteration was the basis of the layout.

But anway both ё and ъ are rare enough (unlike ь) to move around as you please; logical placement (easy to remember) wins over optimal placement (speed) here.

So, I gave the Bulgarian variant another thought. It seems to me that the common Bulgarian phonetic layouts have a few unnecessary differences from the other Cyrillic phonetic layouts?

   
   "Bulgarian phonetic layout", Wikimedia commons – the basis for 'Bulmak' that user Ghoul posted:

[EDIT: But see below for an updated Bulmak!]

   
   The "new phonetic" Bulgarian layout (here from Methodius.org)

Apparently, the "new phonetic" ЧШЕРТЪ layout is an attempted standard (BDS 2006) that may have failed in practice but is found both in Windows and Linux. The ЯВЕРТЪ phonetic layout is the most popular layout in Bulgaria and the non-phonetic BDS layout less used. That's an argument for going with Ghoul's "Bulmak" directly. Some thoughts:

- Frequencywise in relation to Russian, ъ is more common (17.1‰!) and ю less (1.1‰); ь is very rare (0.1‰), э hardly used and ы/ё not used in Bulgarian.
- The Bulgarians like to reclaim the ; and ' keys and I agree with that!
- I'd like to harmonize with the Rulemak setup for the XH keys. I realize that 'х' is romanized to 'h' and it's on the H in some existing phonetic layouts.
- I fear that the Bulgarians would not accept the solution of 'ha' on X; there are thus arguments for either XH mapping but the traditional one should win!
- Putting ч away in the upper corner is odd since it's not all that uncommon (14.4‰)?! It probably deserves being on H or X.
- The э could just stay on '\', as Rulemak already puts it out of the highway? Probably on lv3-4 though.
- As ь is so rare, a lv1-2/lv3-4 swap from Rulemak should be in order (ь Ь ' " → ' " ь Ь); that's consistent in my view.
- I should think that ё can be typed with the diaeresis dead key plus 'е', for the rare occasion that a Bulgarian needs it.
- Losing ы, the Y key is free to hold ъ which is the way Bulgarians prefer it. ы could go to lv3-4 of the semicolon key?
- Then, the odd one out is ю which is stuck on the tilde key. This conforms with the "new phonetic" layout (and YaWERTY...).
- Bulgarian also uses Ǹ (U045D/U040D) on some layouts, an I variant. How common is it? Does it deserve a separate place, or is the grave dead key okay for it?
- In the xkb phonetic layouts there are several other glyphs (U0463/U0462 Ѣ, U046B/U046A Ѫ, U046D/U046C Ѭ); these are obsolete so I hope we can do without.

Do these thoughts make sense, or is there something I'm not aware of? This way, Rulemak and 'Bulgemak' would be more consistent with each other.

   
   The Colemak phonetic layout for Bulgarian Kyrillic script – my take. See the locale Colemak topic.