Time-stamp: <2025-08-24 16h27 UTC>

Thoughts about keyboard layouts i have used

A brief log of what i used, when i used it, how it felt, and why i moved on. Where layouts are presented i've chose to show them in "ortholinear" form (suitable for column staggered keyboards) with the understanding that each column is assigned to a finger from the appropriate hand.

Let the listing commence!

QWERTY

Q W E R T Y U I O P
A S D F G H J K L ;
Z X C V B N M , . /

Colemak

I think i found this by looking up a list of "alternate keyboard layouts" which, at the time, probably had two entries and this was the only layout from the then contemporaneous century.

Q W F P G J L U Y ;
A R S T D H N E I O
Z X C V B K M , . /

ISRQ

For your amusement i present

' F U Y , G P D M V K Z
A N E O H L T I S R Q
/ W ! B ; C - . J X

Actually it was worse than this, i mixed and matched punctuation (eg ! and ? on one key) and various other things.

The only PNG i have of the layout

As i wrote at the time

I have been using ISR for many a year now, and I can't quite recall what I created it to achieve.

Side note: i ended up emailing the author of CarpalX about this layout because i was young and naive and they graciously and patiently replied to explain to me how wrong i was about everything. Thank you Martin Krzywinski!

Colemak DH

Eventually i looked up whether somebody had made a "colemak but better" and lo, people had done exactly that!

Q W F P B J L U Y ;
A R S T G M N E I O
Z X C D V K H , . /

Workman

Q D R W B J F U P ;
A S H T G Y N E O I
Z X M C V K L , . /

Colemank DH (again)

I grew tired of hurting hands.

Q W F P B J L U Y ;
A R S T G M N E I O
Z X C D V K H , . /

VLOM

There's lots to say here, so i'll just point at the link

V L O M Q W F U H .
S R A T K Y C E N I
X J ' D Z G P / B ,

Pine v4

Unfortunately the author of this layout appears to have removed their pages about the layout. I can say that i came to this by playing around on the following website

where it seemed that most people found this layout quite comfortable.

Q L C M K ' F U O Y
N R S T W P H E A I
J X Z G V B D ; , .

Gallium

Pine v4 was fast, but too fiddly for my taste. I asked around on some keyboard layout communities which of the new wave of (NRTSHAEI) layouts was worth trying and the answer was essentially "they're all good". Gallium beat out Graphite for me for not optimising punctuation and having a row stagger/angle version ready (work laptop i'm looking at you!).

B L D C V J F O U ,
N R T S G Y H A E I
X Q M W Z K P ' / .