Roasting Every Keyboard Layout (Part 1)

I decided to roast every keyboard layout I could find. Part 1 covers every layout created up to the introduction of Semimak (a revolutionary layout that spawned an explosion in interest in keyboard layouts) in July 2021. I call layouts created prior to July 2021 pre-genkey layouts. Layouts are listed in chronological order. 

Pre-Colemak Layouts (until 2006) - Beginning experiments

Dhiatensor (1892) - VERY VERY bad. It puts AT and EN on the same fingers, and makes the very mistake of putting E and T, the two most common letters, in the center column. Even you can type "eleven" with the same finger. Maybe E and T were intended to be typed with the thumbs?

Dvorak (1936) - Too much pinky and ring load and pinky ring outrolls on the right hand (look at L on upper left pinky, and see if it is comfortable to type. There are tons of SFBs easily fixed on modern layouts, such as PI, IP, MB, GH, CT, LS, and even IK and KI, etc. Also puts I on the center column (very bad).

Arensito (2001) - Tons of roll reversals and long same hand sequences because it splits the vowels between hands (type "nearer" for example). It also overloads the ring finger with DTM and while claiming to minimize scissors, it still has CU, UC, UM, and MU. Other than that, decent layout.

(* is for any non-letter key)

QL*P* *FUDK

ARENB GSITO

ZW*HJ VCYMX

Evolved (2002) - C is also too common to be on upper left pinky. It causes CH and CT to be awkward finger stretches and it has the SC and OK SFBs on the pinky, despite penalizing SFB heavily on the pinky itself. P and D are on vowel hand center column and this causes tons of SFBs such as IP, PI, DI, and ID.

K,UYP WLMFC

OAEID RNTHS

Q.';Z XVGBJ

Capewell-Dvorak (2003) - 

',.PY QFGRK

OAEIU DHTNS

ZXCVJ LMWB;

Capewell (2005) - Its evolutionary algorithm (Keyboard Evolve) only evaluates bigrams and favors same hand sequences over alternation. This causes tons of roll reversals such as ION, VER, ERE, ARE, ITH, WIT, EVE, RES, AVE, IVE, AME and so on. The site is also VERY confusing and for some odd reason duplicates W and removes M.

.YMDF JPLUQ

AERSG BTNIO

XZCV; KWH,'

Colemak Era (2006-c. 2015) - People started looking for QWERTY similarity and ergonomics at the same time

Colemak (2006) - It keeps some keys from QWERTY, including ZXCV. Perhaps by far the most famous flaw is D and H in the center column - it spawned the beginning of lateral stretch recognition. It also has some ring pinky outward rolls such as YO, IO, RA, and WA, and a lot of roll reversals such as YOU, ION, and so on.

QWPFG JLUY;

ARSTD HNEIO

ZXCVB KM,./

Asset (2006) - This shares many keys in common with Colemak (QWUGATDH and the bottom row) and takes QWERTY similarity so extreme that it is not hard to find common SFBs such as CE, EC, FT, MP (same finger row jump), LO, and OL. Even its creator acknowledged this and thought it was better to optimize for QWERTY similarity and ergonomics.

QWJFG YPUL;

ARSTD HNEIO

ZXCVB KM,./

MTGAP (2008) - Finally, a layout that resembles more modern layouts! But Y shouldn't be on upper pinky because NY and EY require awkward stretches. There is also GL, which is a same finger row jump.

YPOUJ KDLCW

INEA; MHTSR

QZ/.: BFGVX

MTGAP mod by YU (2023) - A modification of MTGAP by a Japanese user, who is interestingly the only one to mention the concepts of pinky ring gymnastics, roll reversals (also called redirects or pinballing) and disjointed same finger usage (skipgrams). He made the following changes:

-Y is moved to the center column on vowel hand to avoid reaching for the upper pinky

BAD: YOU becomes a terrible roll reversal (lateral movement) with a disjointed same finger bigram

I and A switch places as a result

GOOD: Kills AU and UA SFB (although EA is an outward roll)

W is moved to the bottom pinky for the WH-words and is replaced with semicolon. Semicolon is replaced by X on the vowel hand

VERY GOOD: WR sfb now follows the natural curvature of fingers, and less upper pinky stretching over the longer fingers, although the improvement only concerned WH. There aren't too many roll reversals with X either.

/POUJ KDLC;

ANEIY MHTSR

QZ.,X BFGVW Workman (2010) - I like how it takes the finger lengths into account (shorter fingers curl, longer fingers stretch) and has the lowest combined center column and pinky corner use, but that is just it. Workman is a poorly executed layout overall, having a lot of SFBs easily fixed on most layouts (such as CT, MB, FL, NY, OP, PO, and worst of all, LY) and tons of same hand sequences that include roll reversals such as THAT, CARTS, DRAWS, CARD, SHAR, FINE, LINE, LONE, FUNNEL, and so on.

QDRWB JFUP;

ASHTG YNEOI

ZXMCV KL,./

Carpalx Family (QFMLWY, QGMLWB, QGMLWY) (2010) - Initially I thought this was the holy grail of all keyboard layouts thanks to being optimized by an evolutionary algorithm a few years ago. However, I now consider it to be a bad layout because there are several major flaws in the Carpalx algorithm. It does not optimize punctuation keys and overemphasizes minimizing finger travel distance and penalizing bottom row (which is anedoctal at best) at the expense of same finger usgae, rolls, roll reversals, and alternation. Not only that, but the rolling/roll reversal and row jump metrics make little sense because they don't account for hand alternation. E.g. typing OM on QWERTY would be rated as difficult to type as CO and typing FAD (on QWERTY) would be considered to be as difficult as KAD. It puts R and I on the center column and there are WAY too much SFBs such as IP, PI, IF, FI, AP, PA, AF, FA, BO, and even KI (which is underestimated in Google Books corpus). Adding to the fact the keyboard layout analyzer is slow because of the triads table and is very clunky, in conclusion, Carpalx is one of the worst keyboard layout analyzers. Even worse, the only ergonomic keyboard layouts for Danish, Norwegian, and Filipino were generated from Carpalx.

QFMLWY (QWERTY mask):

QFMLW YUOBJ

DSTNR IAEH;

ZVGCX PK,./

QGMLWB (Colemak mask):

QGMLW YUV;

DSTNR IAEOH

ZXCFJ KP,./

QGMLWY (Colemak mask, ZXCV fixed)

QFMLW YFUB;

DSTNR IAEOH

ZXCVJ KP,./

Norman (2013) - It keeps fingers for 22 out of the 26 keys from QWERTY, so it inherits much of QWERTY's problems. There's the WA and SA ring-pinky outward rolls, DEC middle finger, JUYNM right index (P was moved there), and LO ring finger, but also introduces the RI bigram. As for splitting the vowels among both hands and even worse, putting both consonants and vowels on every finger with vowels, it's self-explanatory.

QWDFK JURL;

ASETG YNIOH

ZXCVB PM,./

Qwpr (2013) - E is on the pinky finger, and it retains basically the same index finger arrangements from QWERTY. That's just it. I'm just too tired to comment on the huge QWERTY similarity, meaning huge flaws.

QWPRF YUKL;

ASDTG HNIOE

ZXCVB JM,./

Colemak Mod-DH (2014) - By now, this has probably displaced Dvorak and Colemak as the most popular keyboard layout among the AKL community. Aside from moving D and H from the center column, not much improvdment is seen, since no letters change fingers.

QWFPB JLUY;

ARSTG MNEIO

ZXCDV KH,./

Post-Colemak Era (2014-2021) - Less weight in optimizing for QWERTY similarity for better ergonomic efficiency

HIEAMTSRN/Balance 12 (2014) - 

note: HIEAMTSRN and Balance 12 are different names for the same layout.

At last, here is a layout with YOU+HIEA, the bread and butter out of the vowel blocks! This layout has tons of inward rolls, but I don't like the high upper pinky stretching over the longer fingers. B makes BI and BE (a top 50 gram) bad, while P on upper pinky is terrible (type PROBE for example). V also should be kicked out from the outside column, in favor of  Z. 

BYOU' KDCLPQ;

HIEA, MTSRNV

X().? WGFJZ Halmak (2016) - Its branding as an AI-designed layout shouldn't fool you - many other keyboard layouts were designed with an evolutionary algorithm (mostly simulated annealing) and there's too much pinky-ring gymnastics. WH is a pinky stretch above ring, FL is a pinky-fing scissor, and there's tons of SFBs easily fixed on most modern layouts - CT, AG, PA, EX, and DO are just a few.

WLRBZ ;QUDJ

SHNT, .AEOI

FMVC/ GPXKY

BEAKL (2016) - I love the high inward rolls and de emphasizing on pinkies, but penalizing home row pinky instead created the problem of high SFB. Fortunately, there are thumb key variants that significantly decrease SFB. Also one concern is unnecessarily swapping Y and H, when in fact, BEAKL T-s and T-r actually fix the problem. Even K and X can be easily swapped for lower SFB without significantly increasing the pinky load.

BEAKL 43 (2023, latest version)

QHOU, GLRFB

JIEAY DSTNP

XK".' VMCWZ

BEAKL 15 (late 2010s, latest version for a long time)

QHOUX GCRFZ

YIEA. DSTNB

J/,K' WMLPV

Hands Down Reference (2020) - This layout is no longer recommended by its creator - if you are interested in Hands Down, try Hands Down Neu instead. It is easy to see improvement between this layout and Hands Down Neu: H is moved to the vowels, YOU is no longer a roll reversal,  and there are fewer row jumps now that H is moved to the vowel hand - CL and MP are two of them. The Hands Down layouts heavily inspired my layout, so this and Hanster-Neu has many things in common: I position, OE column, PVTGDB index, NL middle, SC ring, and QR pinky.

QCHPV KYOJ/ RSNTG WUEIA XMLDB ZF',.

Engram (March 2021, December 2021) - The final version was released after Semimak on December 19, 2021, but it had already undergone development since September 21, 2020. I will only show the March 2021 and December 2021 versions.

Engram v1.3 (March 2021) - This had a good criteria and constraints, but a very poor execution. It  penalized the following flow translations equally and they were too broad (e.g. row jumps are worse between adjacent or the same fingers than between index and pinky):

*roll out from index to little finger

*index or little finger on top row

*middle or ring finger on bottom row

*index above middle, or little above ring

*index above ring, or little above middle

*ring above middle

*use same finger twice for a non-repeating letter

*at least one key not on home row

*one key on top row, the other on bottom row

While the criteria looked good on paper, because it avoided the center columns entirely, it has extremely very high pinky movement (L is on pinky, just like Dvorak, and somehow, bottom left pinky was rated more comfy than upper index. Not to mention, it has the GH, IK, and MB SFBs and I causes a lot of pinky ring gymnastics with G. The pinky movement is WAY too high.

YPOX' "FCMWQ

HIEA, .TSNRZ

GKJU? -DVBL

Complaints led to a new version in December 2021, which significantly reduces the high pinky movement (but it is still too much) and relocates Y and L away from the pinky:

Engram v2.0 (December 2021) - But it still has high pinky movement, and a lot of bad pinky gymnastics with other fingers (such as BE, BI, GI, SP, and NF. The fact that all letters are banned from the center column makes the rest of the layout worse than it could be. It is somewhat popular, although mostly overshadowed by the genkey layouts, because Sunaku praised it highly and the layout itself has a great website by its creator.

BYOU' "LDWVZ

CIEA, .HTSNQ

GXJK? -RMFP

ISRT (March 2021) - This was released just a few months before Genkey was released. This has over 10% roll reversals which is just WAY too bothersome for me to handle, mostly because I is on the consonant hand. There many long strings of hands that have tons of roll reversals such as RISKY, RISKS, LYRICS, UPBEAT, GILD, and so on..

YCLMK ZFU,'

ISRTG PNEAO

QVWDJ BH/.X