Basically it has only one big problem: you designed it only thinking of your own needs. You use Windows (XP?) and you play certain computer games. Therefore, you placed the keys that you use yourself the most together.

I'll comment on your "in-depth explaination", in the same order.

1. Actually, that's one of the few good points
2. The possiblity of accidentially striking the delete key increases with this, don't you think?
3. Indeed Alt won't do much, but…
   1. See above
   2. Well, this assumes of course that you use a Windows-based operating system. Other operating systems, including Mac OS X (Apple) and Linux use entirely different keyboard gestures. For example, Win (Command actually)+Q is similar to Alt+F4, while Command+Option(=alt)+Esc is similar to Ctrl+Alt+Del on Mac OS. Linux uses the same shortcuts as Windows, but it adds Ctrl+Alt+Backspace (quick reboot, all applications killed) Ctrl+Alt+Esc (click on a window to terminate it's application) and Ctrl+Alt+Fx, where x is a number (e.g. Ctrl+Alt+F1), which will switch between different user sessions.
   3. Likewise, the usage of the Control key on other operating systems is very different than in Windows. For example, on a Mac you have three modifier keys: Control, Option (=Alt/Alt Gr) and Command(=Win key). While in windows you would use ctrl+c and ctrl+v to copy and paste, in Mac OS this would become Cmd+C and Cmd+V. The Control key is almost unused in Mac OS. The only usage I know includes many "old" Unix programs (Unix is to Mac OS like DOS is to Windows).
4. That spacebar is just plain ugly, but ok, its only my opinion. Also note that people that often have to use the tab key (for example: programmers) use their pinky finger to press the tab key.
5. Wow, are you terrific or what? </sarcasm>
6. Please see my comment on 3.2. Also please note it's actually very easy to disable the this in Windows. And second, when using Compiz Fusion (a prog for Linux, something like Vista's Aero, but 10x as good and it works on 10x older hardware) the Super key (a neutral/cross-platform name for the dubbed "Windows" key) is used a lot in keyboard gestures.
7. A lot of games actually use those keys. For naming a reasonable popular example, Second Life uses the pgup/pgdn keys to fly.
8. And how are you going to do this on a notebook? There is a cd drive/usb-ports where you want to put a switch. Plus, there are also a lot of people that use those "ultra-thin" keyboards (for example the Apple Keyboard)

Thanks for your attention.

Of course this kind of software goes far beyond that. It can let you assign any key almost any function - changing a letter, launching an application, sending keystrokes, sending a command such as "maximize a window", etc.

Let's share in this thread suggestions for free- and shareware keyboard re-mapping software.

My own suggestions are:

freeware: http://www.serio-soft.com - it can change any key on any keyboard, thus it gives you full control over multimedia keyboards' additional keys. It's rarely updated and has a few bugs, but the biggest con for international users is that it is available only in Russian.

shareware: http://softboy.net/key/index.htm - excellent in features; has all the features of the freeware above plus more. I haven't used it for a long time so I cannot comment on bugs and support; interface is somewhat cheap looking.

Hola, soy profesor de mecanografía, he trabajado en educación por 10 años. Tengo una distribución propia de teclado y me gustaría participar en el concurso. Lamentablemente no se hablar ni escribir en ingles. Ayúdenme por favor. Gracias moc.liamtoh|72ocsesirc#moc.liamtoh|72ocsesirc

Thanks for your elegant design. I like it very much, and I hope you'll refine your ideas and publish keyboard maps for it. You get an 'Honorable Mention'.

Thanks for submitting your very interesting designs.

I like Asset a lot, but I have to admit that I like Colemak slightly better.

You get an 'Honorable Mention', and I want to thank you for taking part.

An amazing keyboard, with lots of good ideas. But sometimes simpler is better.

You get an 'Honorable Mention', and I want to thank you for taking part.

Your keyboard is interesting, and I don't blame you for getting lots of votes, though getting people to register just to vote for your keyboard is not a good measure. We want people to comment and vote because we want to see which keyboards are really well designed. So your keyboard… like I said, interesting, but has some flaws. First, like some other keyboards here, it's not a new layout but a whole new design, which makes it useless for manufacturers. You're not actually solving the Caps Lock problem, but redesigning the whole concept of the keyboard.

You get an 'Honorable Mention', and I want to thank you for taking part.

Similarity to QWERTY is very important in the learning stage in order to make learning easier and faster. Once you master a new keyboard layout, you'll often start to forget how to type in QWERTY. People who have been typing in Dvorak for a long time and need to use QWERTY for one reason or another find themselves almost unable to type. If for example, you move the Shift keys, it would be much more difficult to adjust from ToB keyboard to a normal laptop keyboard, for example.

It's a QWERTY world after all. I used Dvorak for two years before I gave up on it. I had to use QWERTY some of the time, and switching between layouts was very error prone and difficult. I find it much easier to switch back and forth between Colemak and QWERTY because it's much easier to hunt keys when I'm typing on Colemak.

Perhaps part of what makes it more difficult to switch between Dvorak and Qwerty is that Dvorak is very asymmetric. Once your brain has adapted to the left hand doing all the vowels and that about the only thing can be done in rolls are diphtongs and consonant clusters, it's harder to go back to Qwerty. But I don't know.

For me, personally, the easiest changes to learn are 1. moving the keys up or down 2. mirroring them to the excact opposite posititon 3. swapping similiar letters, like P and B. The hardest are those that move keys from the stronger two fingers to the weaker ones and to make it even worse, flip hands while doing it. And by hardest I mean those that I find it disgusting to accommodate to my nervous system, not the ones that are take the longest to hunt or whatever.

But I'm not that familiar with the long term effects on maintaining “fluency” on multiple layouts. If you must move some keys, is it better to just try move them close to the original positions, or away from them, to avoid mix-ups? Then what again is close, and are there some kinds of changes, despite being easy to learn, that would melt down in your mind over time and often cause mix-ups? Like that Dvorak Y and T thing you mentioned.

If languages are to trust, learning another, similiar language would be easy as long as you're fluent with the first one. Also at first the hardest to memorize would be words, but in the long run what would take the most effort would be learning the structures, sentence formation and all the other more abstract aspects of thought that drive the upper, actual levels of speech. Interference is also so much more common in these deeper areas where it is often hard to draw excact lines between the two languages.

Is there a point to make out of this all? Even though it would take time to learn a thing at first, it may only mean that it's this simple “upper level” detail which won't bother you much in future. The most difficult to get used to are changes at the deepest, possibly even invisible levels where even small alterations can cause complete structural collapses. But which are the smallest detail-like aspects in layout memorizing and which the deeper ones which we rather just leave to intuition, that I would like to know…

Punctuation keys are ridiculously easy to learn anyway, even though they do require a bit getting used to, and I can go back to the Qwerty way with no problems.

You perform the finger balance calculation as if 'X' position is as easy to press as the 'S' position. Again, you shouldn't put the letter 'D' on the 'W' position.

You're correct, the keys should be weighed differently in the finger balance percentages. I still fail to see the problem with the D position though, but it is probably just me then. I have put keys like M, F, P or G there in recent versions as a compromise.

I however find the the Qwerty U position, where you have L, to be even worse than Qwerty W. Pressing it almost always requires a long stretch of the index finger and forces the other fingers to be turned a bit outwards as well. After it pressing other keys with the same hand is quite uncomfortable. It also makes the index fingers roll around the center a lot more than would be necessary, resulting in an increasing actual finger distance. Placing uncommon characters on the top row would greatly reduce index finger stress and distance…This was one of the reasons I started modifying Colemak in the first place.

Same finger is definitely a bad thing, especially with the weak fingers. e.g. try to press QZQZQZ and see how tiring it is. When typing in high speeds (>80WPM), same finger becomes one of the most important factors for speed, and combos/rolls become much less significant. Every time you have to hit a same-finger, it slows you down and interrupts your typing stream. I really don't think I'm overstating the importance of same-finger, it really is very important as it affects typing fluency, speed, accuracy, and strain. Words such as "wryly" require pressing 5 times with the same finger.

There are certain bad combos which slow down typing almost as much as same-fingers. Try something like RAT vs RTD on Colemak. Those should also be eliminated, the roll direction should be kept towards the center, Qwerty positions should be respscted, combos and hand alteration should be optimized; scores under 2.0 are impossible without sacrificing anything.

Moreover, designing for low same-finger doesn't have to conflict with any other design principle. Colemak, Capewell, Klausler's, Maltron, Arensito all achieve very low same-finger. Arensito is also designed for maximum combos like ToB, so there's no excuse to design a modern keyboard layout with such high same-finger ratio.

-Colemak is an almost Dvorak-like layout which almost never keeps the fingers in a flowing motion and is far from symmetric
-Capewell (close) and Maltron are not Qwerty-like layouts, have a bad finger balance and as far as I know have more bad combos
-Arensito is designed for ergonomic keyboards with even rows (it places three keys on ring and middle fingers), which makes layout designing a lot easier, and it isn't Qwerty-based
- The fact that Klausler couldn't find a layout better than Dvorak already shows that we should completely disregard him

The pinkies work too hard, the pinkies do too much same-finger

If the apostrophe thing is let aside, the only difference in pinkie usage between our layouts, is that in ToB the comma is added on the left pinkie. The right one still has more stress, if shift presses are not counted anyway. Maybe you just found it hard to get used to the new location of the punctuation and felt it as strain at first… The way comma and dot are pressed should put more strain on the wrists more than on the fingers, so once you get used to it, it shouldn't stress the pinkies as much. I will change the punctuation back to normal though if others report strain as well.

same-hand jumping combos such as "BU" cause strain, large distance same-finger combos such "BY" are difficult to type

Since B is about as close to both hands, it is supposed to be altered between them depending on the following / previous keys. This is something I learned to do on Qwerty anyway. This should solve the issue of uncomfortable stretches and same-finger typing involving it. Moreover, Y can be pressed with the middle finger to avoid same-finger typing, much the same way you'd likely type GR on Qwerty.

I miss O on the home position, D is uncomfortable to type. Typing 'the' is nice, but I don't think it's worth all the other sacrifices you made in the layout.

I think I'll have to move the O down in future versions, which will probably make my layout more like Arensito or Capewell. Only better. :P I'll also stop making compromises for the other languages. I've got the alternatives pretty much thought out already, even though I have to read something about how the memory works before moving further… But even before that, I'll take a little break from keyboard designing, spend more time with my friends and fulfill all my other New Year's promises (here we actually make promises instead of wishes), finish Twilight Princess and the list goes on… But I'll be back anyway to kick all your other designer asses and actually release the layout someday.

Finally, I like the first version better, but here's my current one anyway: (less same-finger, much more bad combos)

 ,GUPWJKYH. ASITDRNELO ZXCVBFM:Q 

Happy New Year to everyone and congratulations to Shai for winning. ^_^

Yes, the keybord is not removed but he said that the votes will be… :( I am not as happy to hear that as you are.. However it's new years comming and I say Hhappy New Years for everyone!!!!!!!!!!!!! :)

Seems 100% legit to me…

It's a QWERTY world after all. I used Dvorak for two years before I gave up on it. I had to use QWERTY some of the time, and switching between layouts was very error prone and difficult. I find it much easier to switch back and forth between Colemak and QWERTY because it's much easier to hunt keys when I'm typing on Colemak.

The letter O definitely should be on the home position. O is the 4th most common letter in English, and it's the 3rd in Spanish, the 3rd in Portuguese, the 4th in Polish, the 4th in Italian, etc. That said Colemak is designed for English. It's impossible to design a keyboard layout for multiple languages. It will never work well for all of them. That said, in Colemak I did take into account that H while somewhat common (8th-9th) in English is rare in almost all other languages, and that's one of the reasons why in Colemak it is in the home row, but it isn't in the home position.

Although I don't use it very often, I'd definitely miss the right control. Without it, hitting shortcuts will require moving from the home position and stretching. e.g. pressing Ctrl+Enter with one hand is impossible, pressing Ctrl+Tab would require moving from the home position. On Colemak I use RightCtrl+CapsLock which acts as Ctrl+Backspace (erase last word). Pressing Ctrl+P with one hand causes a lot of strain.

You should definitely avoid moving keys to their mirrored position. e.g. even after using Dvorak for two years I got confused sometimes between the T and the Y which are mirrored in Dvorak, while typing in Dvorak as well as typing in QWERTY.

Every time you move punctuation keys, you have to relearn 2 keys, not one. e.g. when you move the comma key you have to relearn both the comma and the LessThan key. Take into account that keys that aren't used often and punctuation keys take the longest to relearn because they get the least practice. I also think that keeping the keys on the same hand eases learning quite a bit.

Same finger is definitely a bad thing, especially with the weak fingers. e.g. try to press QZQZQZ and see how tiring it is. When typing in high speeds (>80WPM), same finger becomes one of the most important factors for speed, and combos/rolls become much less significant. Every time you have to hit a same-finger, it slows you down and interrupts your typing stream. I really don't think I'm overstating the importance of same-finger, it really is very important as it affects typing fluency, speed, accuracy, and strain. Words such as "wryly" require pressing 5 times with the same finger. Moreover, designing for low same-finger doesn't have to conflict with any other design principle. Colemak, Capewell, Klausler's, Maltron, Arensito all achieve very low same-finger. Arensito is also designed for maximum combos like ToB, so there's no excuse to design a modern keyboard layout with such high same-finger ratio.

Example of words that are uncomfortable to type due to low hand alternation: everywhere, excluded, rescheduled, structure, imagining, exceeded, insignificant, executed.

You perform the finger balance calculation as if 'X' position is as easy to press as the 'S' position. Again, you shouldn't put the letter 'D' on the 'W' position.

I'm not saying you should move the apostrophe, but don't put the I (I'm, I'll, I'd etc) or S (what's, it's, etc.) on the pinky finger.

I did try it a bit, and everything I tell you is because I noticed it while trying it out. The pinkies work too hard, the pinkies do too much same-finger, same-hand jumping combos such as "BU" cause strain, large distance same-finger combos such "BY" are difficult to type, I miss O on the home position, D is uncomfortable to type. Typing 'the' is nice, but I don't think it's worth all the other sacrifices you made in the layout.

The keyboard design itsef was "inspired" by Maltron I have to admit.

The Shift keys should be left in their normal positions, moving them would be very counterintuitive.

I actually learned to use a layout where the shift was pressed with the left thumb in a few hours. After that the standard seemed counterintuitive. (I moved the right hand keys to the numpad and the left hand ones to the right so that Alt Gr / right command worked as a thumb-pressed shift). The most comfortable choice was quite surprisingly placing a few alphabetical keys under the thumbs, but that again would require a whole new layout and a design…

Currently there's only one Shift/Ctrl key, meaning it's very difficult to type some things with one hand.

It's difficult with standard keyboards as well. When I asked some people I know about it (some very established one hand typists among them), none of them ever used the right Ctrl/command for shortcuts. It seems easier to just bring your other hand to use for ctrl+p for example — we're more used to moving the right hand on and off the mouse than the left hand across the keyboard. And besides, no-one would care to use shift if they are typing something with just one hand, except maybe to access some special shortcuts like ctrl+shift+z where the right shift isn't needed anyway.

Home and End are very useful keys and should be conserved. Also you need to take account that there are many hotkeys that use these keys, e.g. you can press Shift+Ctrl+End to select everything until the end of the document.

It's shift+cmd+down on macs, which certainly makes a lot more sense. Shift+up would select text on the row above and cmd+up does the same as a Home key, so combine them and that's what you get. The arrows are also a bit easier to reach than Home/End. What my is point is that even though keys like Home, delete or print screen might be used for shortcuts today, we would do just as well without them. The same goes for Alt Gr basically.

But if either of the other two people who read this thread use Home/End frequenly, let me know where. This will determine if they will be seen useful enough and included in future keyboards, which will all obviously be modeled after Thumb-o-Board, or not.

Mac users will miss the eject key.

Actually you have a point here. I was about to whine how it's not up to the hardware-maker to decide which controls should be included in keyboards and which in the hardware itself, but then again almost everyone needs a shutdown, eject and the volume control buttons so they could actually become part of the new "standard" set of keys. Then hardware itself could be entirely free of controls. Monitor brightness and power controls would be extremely convenient in keyboards as well.

Although on normal keyboards the thumb is underutilized, you're probably overworking the thumb which can strain the thumb and the wrist. The thumb can quite easily move horizontally, but not so much vertically. The Backspace/Left/Alt won't be comfortable to type.

Of course the keys under the thumbs can also be pressed with other fingers like you'd do with the arrows and others on normal keyboards.

Pressing ANY of the special keys on standard keyboards causes strain for the wrists. In Thumb-o-Board mostly just Esc, Tab, Page Up/Down and the arrows, along with the punctuation cause it. And the thumbs are still underworked, IMO more stress should be put on them than even on the index fingers. They just tend to get strained on normal keyboards because the space is in such an unnatural position.

I found the Alt/Btckspace position by printing the layout out and just experimenting what felt the best for me (as I mentioned in the submission thread), but it should quite certainly still be moved a bit now that you've mentioned it as well.

Ok, this got a bit out of hand, but I'll try to wrap things up (even though I have worked on the layout about ten times more)

Very difficult to learn, moves many more keys

That's true, but it isn't *that* much more difficult to learn. In my layout 6 keys are left untouched, 5 are pressed with the same fingers, 1 is mirrored and 3 are pressed with their mirrored qwerty counterpart fingers. In Colemak the same numbers are 10, 2, 1 and 0. Learning mirrored layouts is actually ridiculously easy — I did this many times during the design process. Colemak has also many keys close to their original positions, which should reduce hunting during the first few days, but then again a question should be asked that how much should be sacrificed in learnability compared to the actual gain in ergonomics/speed over qwerty.

I also think that part of the learning process is about associating speech with motions of the hand. As I have placed most vowels — and common syllable nuclei — under the middle fingers, the sonorants n, r, l and m under the index fingers and the obstruents t, d and g under the first two fingers, people begin to associate fingers with syllable parts/sounds, which should make it at least slightly easier to learn. Reaching fast typing speeds should also be easier on this layout, which is the thing that ultimately counts.

ToB has 200% more same-finger typing than Colemak (worse than Dvorak)

There's so much more to keyboard design than minimizing same-finger typing, but it is obviously the area where I get my ass kicked by Colemak. Having three out of the common sonorants under the index fingers required some sacrifices… But if the average typer should reach 60 WPM (300 characters) and the average loss in same-finger presses would be 0.5s, it would add only about (0.033/2)*300*0.5 = 2.25 seconds more time per minute when typing at the maximum speed compared to Colemak. So I think you have overstressed the importance of this factor in your design.

ToB has 200% more same-hand row jumping than Colemak (worse than Dvorak)

Same-hand row jumping only matters in a fraction of the key progressions, it shouldn't be calculated with such a simple algorithm. Sometimes it may even be harmful *not* to do a row-jump. For example OJ is easier to type on Qwerty than OU is. Arguably even ON might be considered easier than OU, even though it jumps two rows compared to OU's zero. KN is also about as easy to write or even easier than KH.

Among the most uncomfortable row-jumps are Qwerty's KU and especially DR, its mirrored counterpart. In our layouts the first is replaced with AP (ToB) and EL (Colemak), the second with EY and SP. The first is (both ways around) about 70% more common in Colemak, the second is about 250% more common.

ToB has 5% more finger distance

If your finger distance is calculated with the applet by Jon A. Maxwell's, then it is far from accurate as well. It doesn't take into account that the default resting positions of the fingers are not directly on top of the keys and that all the fingers move when you reach for any key not in a "home position". Some of the first layouts I did had about 10-15% less finger travel than Colemak, still somehow miraculously, my fingers seem to move less on this layout. Anyway, I wouldn't trust the applet in this aspect.

ToB has very low hand-alternation, possibly even worse than QWERTY, meaning that there are many times you must write a long string of characters with the same hand, which might cause strain on the hand.

This is excacly what my combos/rolls are doing, and it's only positive. There are some common single-hand syllables that are uncomfortable to type like sing, gain/goin and words like foam/soap/pink/thinking/sinking/singing but generally it's really hard to find complete (long) words you could type with a single hand.

D and O should be on the home row, but aren't.

Having O and the other vowels under the ring fingers makes it so much more probable that they, uhh, involve in a roll with their neighbours. There are also languages like German where O is not that common. Placing D on the home row would be possible, but it would likely increase the amount of words/cyllables typed with the same hand. I might still place it there for the final version, because right now the stress on the left index finger is bigger than on the right because F under the right one on the home row…

ToB strains the pinky fingers, e.g. words like "I'm" and "I'll" are a same-finger on the pinky, which are very uncomfortable to type.
Punctuation keys are strewn about, and it doesn't seem too logical or aesthetic.

These are another downsides which I apparently just have to accept. There's no way to move the apostrophe to a better position without approaching the layout from a completely different, most likely a worse aspect.

I *could* swap Q and comma to make it a bit more aesthetic, but I'm already so in love with the comma's new position that it might be hard. And the reason the bottom row goes like ZXCVBKM:Q is due to a certain migration - W is moved to colon's place in most international versions.

ToB places the common D on the W position, which is very uncomfortable.

There's still only about 8% stress on that finger, the same as with Colemak or Qwerty. And the right hand's ring finger on Qwerty has as much as 12% stress.

I find it the most comfortable to keep my ring fingers resting on the top edge of Qwerty's S and L, mainly because the ring fingers are so much longer than the pinkies and that keeps the hands in a more relaxed position. Then it is no problem reaching for the top row's W and O — or D in my layout's case. Of course this is also an individual thing, but because Qwerty's O, which is even more common than D is placed on a similiar position, most people should have no problem with it.

ToB is a work progress (I don't think you even use it yourself). Colemak's design is considered stable.

You just had to put that in didn't you. But true, it is unstable. It doesn't even have a name yet. :D But I have always used the layouts I've created (this one for a few days now, but I've used other layouts designed with similiar principles for all of december…) It has allowed me to see how they work in practice and to constantly improve them.

Actually I think I've come up with a way to move D to the home row now…

Oh yeah and I started doing the layout by slightly modifying Colemak. Right now I really think it's a lot better than it. You should try it out as well. :P

I guess I should re-submit it — but it's clear that Asset is not going to win. I'm voting for Asset AND Colemak (I'm glad they decided to change the voting rules. First-past-the-post is dumb.)

• The Shift keys should be left in their normal positions, moving them would be very counterintuitive.
• Currently there's only one Shift/Ctrl key, meaning it's very difficult to type some things with one hand.
• Home and End are very useful keys and should be conserved. Also you need to take account that there are many hotkeys that use these keys, e.g. you can press Shift+Ctrl+End to select everything until the end of the document.
• Insert key is certainly useful when editing files to switch between Insert/Replace mode. Moreover, some people prefer to use Shift+Delete/Ctrl+Insert/Shift+Insert for Cut/Copy/Paste, Nevertheless, I can understand taking it out.
• Although on normal keyboards the thumb is underutilized, you're probably overworking the thumb which can strain the thumb and the wrist. The thumb can quite easily move horizontally, but not so much vertically. The Backspace/Left/Alt won't be comfortable to type.
• Mac users will miss the eject key.
• No AltGr key could be a problem for typing in many languages.

Your keyboard layout (ToB) compared to Colemak:

• Very difficult to learn, moves many more keys
• ToB has 5% more finger distance
• ToB has 200% more same-finger typing than Colemak (worse than Dvorak)
• ToB has 200% more same-hand row jumping than Colemak (worse than Dvorak)
• ToB has very low hand-alternation, possibly even worse than QWERTY, meaning that there are many times you must write a long string of characters with the same hand, which might cause strain on the hand.
• ToB strains the pinky fingers, e.g. words like "I'm" and "I'll" are a same-finger on the pinky, which are very uncomfortable to type.
• ToB places the common D on the W position, which is very uncomfortable.
• D and O should be on the home row, but aren't.
• It's too difficult to learn, it moves too many keys, and a lot of punctuation keys.
• Punctuation keys are strewn about, and it doesn't seem too logical or aesthetic.
• ToB is a work progress (I don't think you even use it yourself). Colemak's design is considered stable.

And some sleep, because it's 6.32 AM in Finland… :|

Here it goes:

 ,duywjpog."? therlfnasi'= zxcvbkm:q- 

Meant for a standard jagged-row keyboard. C and M are pressed with index fingers. Y-fingering depends on the preceding/following letters: it is pressed with the ring finger when accompanied by L, R, W, B or V ; otherwise with the index finger. (you'll most likely type gr on qwerty in this way as well, try it out to get the idea). This kind of altering in fingering may also be applied to P, R, N, L and F.

The way I ended up with it like this was a result of pure trial and error, no programming involved at any stage. For about two months I experimented with different layouts, perhaps moving only few keys a day or starting completely from scratch after having gone through all the other alternatives (this happened about 200 times)… And every time I tried to narrow down the list of final layouts by deciding which features should be part of the final ones, and above all, which shouldn't.

I backed this up with really nonscientific neuromuscular research and by memorizing the frequencies of letter pairs and the most common letter triads in the English language… The method is extremely vague, but I believe it has managed to produce currently the best, though very tangled, algorithm for creating a keyboard layout.

Generally, my guidelines are as follows:

- After each successful rolling progression of the fingers (eg asd), the following keys should be typed with the other hand. (asdp is a lot easier than asdw for example), on qwerty

- The number of rolling motions should be maximized
-This includes even such progressions where hands are altered in the middle of doing the rolls, eg as-poi-df is considered easier than as-poi-sd

- Doing rolls is easier when starting with the weaker fingers; from the sides of the keyboard towards the center
-> Roll-initial letters should be placed at the sides, finals to the center of the keyboard

- Successively typing keys with adjacent fingers is easier than with fingers that are further apart (related to the rolls)
- Almost all of the most common letter pairs are either vowel-consonant or consonant-vowel
-> Vowels should generally be typed with the middle fingers, since then they are bordered with as many other letters (consonants) as possible.

- Some uncomfortable finger progressions using the same hand, such as RPM, RPI, RIP, PMR and to some extent also RP should be avoided. (With the letters denoting finger names)
->This greatly reduces the combinations of letters that can be placed under the pinky and ring fingers, and ultimately makes it possible to "evolve" layouts without programming
Colemak and Capewell for example place ion, one of the most common triplets in English, on a RPI / RPM position…

- Keep z,x,c,v and some other keys on their qwerty locations if possible

- The motion of the left and the right hands should be fairly symmetric ? vowels should be placed under both hands. Most real life motion is symmetric so we're more comfortable with it…

- Finger stress then again should not be symmetric, because a majority of people are right-handed. Because of Qwerty's influence and the placement of the shift, our left pinky should however be the stronger than the right one.

- Ideal stress distribution (including shift) would be about 8-10-14-16 || 18-16-12-6 (Left pinky to index || right index to pinky), but then again this a is very subjective matter.

-I tried to keep the distribution somewhere near the ideal when typing English, Swedish, Finnish and German, even though English was my priority. Adding the extra languages to the pot should make the layout more usable with other non-English languages as well, while hopefully not harming its English performance too much…

- I also tried to reduce same finger typing (like aq on Qwerty) in all of these languages, but mostly in English

- I tried to put the most commonly used keys on the home row

Using a corpus of classical novels (30%), Wikipedia articles (30%), news stories (20%) and forum threads (10%), the distribution, same finger percentage and the percntage of keys on the home row were:

09-08-14-17 || 13-17-08-11 (3.3) (64) for English
10-06-12-18 || 19-15-08-08 (2.7) (65) for Swedish
09-05-12-13 || 18-19-08-13 (2.9) (64) for Finnish
08-09-20-15 || 18-09-09-10 (2.7) (67) for German

Now the same finger ratios (for English) and home row percentage are slightly worse than what Colemac, Capewell or Arensito would do, but taking the fingering of Y into account would still reduce the same finger-percentage a bit.

But I think that focusing on the rolls and finger progressions really compensates for that in any case. Writing with this layout is more like a wave-riding-experience compared to the random hammering I get with Colemac for example. :P But Shai and Martink, I want to hear your comments before actually releasing it… Because I know there is still something fundamentally wrong here.

The keyboard is way too big to be practical. Just the left part of the keyboard is the size of entire laptop keyboard. The LCD on the bottom left part is not a good idea, because that's where you would place your wrists. The design should be made a bit more symmetrical – on the left part you put an LCD, on the right part you don't. On the left part the letters are near the center part, on the right part the numeric keypad is near the center part, the left part uses a jagged-key keyboard layout, the right part uses a straight-key keyboard layout.

The right shift is very uncomfortable to press. It would be a good idea to move the Windows key from it's current place, because it can interrupt some games if pressed accidentally. The calculator is also a bad idea. It's a feature most gamers wouldn't use, and if pressed accidentally, it would also suddenly stop the numeric keypad from working as expected. Also since it's a gamer keyboard one would expect some kind of gaming controls built-in (e.g. a joystick/gamepad). The LCD might be useful, but looking at it requires taking your eyes off the screen. In most games, if you lose sight of what's happening, you lose. Likewise, since the keyboard is so complex and there are so many keys, you must look at the keyboard to find them.

The little finger is too weak and it isn't accurate enough to operate a scroll wheel. Try scrolling the scroll wheel on your mouse (or use a trackpoint/trackball/etc.) with your little finger–it's very uncomfortable and tiring.

Sorry to criticize. If there is a reason, tell me. I'm not much of a typist, so I might be missing something.

I wish there was time for me to enter a design of my own. Maybe next year?

You're keyboard's the bomb, though. Serious. Looks like a picture out of a manual! It's got my vote.

But I have to disagree with what you said about the punctuation. Take the new colon position for example: Moving the pinkies to the sides of the home row requires much less effort than moving them to the bottom row. The latter makes you do this grabbing-like motion with all fingers involved, a serious flow-breaker, while the way they are placed here requires only a small wrist movement, and all other fingers remain on their home row positions. So yes, I did move the semicolon and apostrophe a bit further, but all the other punctuation should be easier to reach.

Short description:

Thumb-o-Board 2000 is a concept of a simpler, more ergonomic keyboard for cross-platform use.

Image:

Long description:

The thumbs are our strongest and most versatile fingers, yet they are only used for adding spaces in most standard keyboards, apparently as a some kind of a strange typewriter-era relic. Thumb-o-Board is here to fix that - the shift for example is placed under the default resting position of your left thumb.

As you don't have to reach keys (especially the shifts) with your pinkies, the movement of your wrists is quite considerably reduced, making it faster and more ergonomic to type. All other navigation/modifier keys are accessed with the thumbs as well - a huge benefit for the frequent backspace or page up/down users for example.

Punctuation has been moved to the sides of the alphabetical keys - caps lock is replaced with comma.

The keys that have been removed:

Caps lock, num lock, scroll lock, pause, insert, print screen:
After 10 years as a windows user, I still don't understand the purpose of num lock, other than that it annoyingly locks the num pad in some computers by default. Only caps lock has managed to survive in modern mac keyboards.

F-keys:
These have become kind of useless since the invention of the mouse. While they do provide some nice workspace changes in some pro applications among other things, there's no use for them most of the time. If system-wide funtions are assigned to them, they'll interfere with the application-specific shortcuts. And since the shortcuts are almost never used consistently through different applications, they are hard to learn in the first place. Instead the Thumb-o-Board 2000 contains 6 programmable keys. If needed, F-key like functionabty could be assigned to shift + numpad for example.

Windows keys (or ctrls in mac), alt gr:
I think the windows keys were some kind of a sick scheme by Microsoft to get all 3rd party hardware marked with their logo, but they just forgot to add any functionality to the keys. Other than messing up full screen programs. Controls in macs are just as useless - they are only used for some special text manipulation/navigation functions not needed by the average user. Windows's alt gr could be replaced with just alt in many cases, or alt+ shift for example. In any case, three modifier keys is just enough.

The two deletes and backspace:
Have been merged into a single key.

Home and end:
Can be replaced with shift+page up/down for example. Or just simply by tapping either page button.

Numbers on the upper row:
It's more comfortable to input numbers using the numpad, and since the numpad is quite close to the default resting position of the hands in this layout, the upper row contains only special/punctuation characters.

81 keys in total - compared to ~104 in the standard

Improvements in ergonomics:

• Special keys and numpad are easy to reach
• Your hands are placed a bit more apart than in most standard keyboards
• The rows of keys are aligned evenly - less finger travel and a more relaxed writing position
• Almost all punctuation can be done without shifts
• Colon and comma remapped to the home row
• Easy to add accents, umlauts etc

The alphabetical layout featured is a slightly modified Capewell Close Keys 0.9.3 for English. At the moment I find it to be the best out of Arensito/Colemak/Capewell trio. It is however a work in progress, so the layout may change dramatically before it is officially released.
(My modifications: K moved to J's old place, J to the bottom row under the right hands ring finger, added international characters to the places of punctuation marks)

Short description:

Thumb-o-Board 2000 is a concept of a simpler, more ergonomic keyboard for cross-platform use.

Image:

http://nojespark.net/thumbboard.png

Long description:

The thumbs are our strongest and most versatile fingers, yet they are only used for adding spaces in most standard keyboards, apparently as a some kind of a strange typewriter-era relic. Thumb-o-Board is here to fix that - the shift for example is placed under the default resting position of your left thumb.

As you don't have to reach keys (especially the shifts) with your pinkies, the movement of your wrists is quite considerably reduced, making it faster and more ergonomic to type. All other navigation/modifier keys are accessed with the thumbs as well - a huge benefit for the frequent backspace or page up/down users for example.

Punctuation has been moved to the sides of the alphabetical keys - caps lock is replaced with comma.

The keys that have been removed:

Caps lock, num lock, scroll lock, pause, insert, print screen:
After 10 years as a windows user, I still don't understand the purpose of num lock, other than that it annoyingly locks the num pad in some computers by default. Only caps lock has managed to survive in modern mac keyboards.

F-keys:
These have become kind of useless since the invention of the mouse. While they do provide some nice workspace changes in some pro applications among other things, there's no use for them most of the time. If system-wide funtions are assigned to them, they'll interfere with the application-specific shortcuts. And since the shortcuts are almost never used consistently through different applications, they are hard to learn in the first place. Instead the Thumb-o-Board 2000 contains 6 programmable keys. If needed, F-key like functionabty could be assigned to shift + numpad for example.

Windows keys (or ctrls in mac), alt gr:
I think the windows keys were some kind of a sick scheme by Microsoft to get all 3rd party hardware marked with their logo, but they just forgot to add any functionality to the keys. Other than messing up full screen programs. Controls in macs are just as useless - they are only used for some special text manipulation/navigation functions not needed by the average user. Windows's alt gr could be replaced with just alt in many cases, or alt+ shift for example. In any case, three modifier keys is just enough.

The two deletes and backspace:
Have been merged into a single key.

Home and end:
Can be replaced with shift+page up/down for example. Or just simply by tapping either page button.

Numbers on the upper row:
It's more comfortable to input numbers using the numpad, and since the numpad is quite close to the default resting position of the hands in this layout, the upper row contains only special/punctuation characters.

81 keys in total - compared to ~104 in the standard

Improvements in ergonomics:

• Special keys and numpad are easy to reach
• Your hands are placed a bit more apart than in most standard keyboards
• The rows of keys are aligned evenly - less finger travel and a more relaxed writing position
• Almost all punctuation can be done without shifts
• Colon and comma remapped to the home row
• Easy to add accents, umlauts etc

The alphabetical layout featured is a slightly modified Capewell Close Keys 0.9.3 for English. At the moment I find it to be the best out of Arensito/Colemak/Capewell trio. It is however a work in progress, so the layout may change dramatically before it is officially released.
(My modifications: K moved to J's old place, J to the bottom row under the right hands ring finger, added international characters to the places of punctuation marks)

The keys on the bottom will be inadvertently pressed everytime people rest their wrists from typing. Moreover, every time you want to press these keys you need to move your hands from the home position. Putting the power management keys at the bottom is a really bad idea, because it's too easy to accidentally shut off the computer.

Good job making this keyboard, Shai! The way you present Colemak on your site is superb. Colemak definitely gets a plus from me.

There also some other minor reasons for switching the R and S.

• Better finger balance, doesn't overload the ring finger.
• Less same hand home row jumping.
• More comfortable hand rolling movements.
• A more logical and easier to remember order (QRST).
• Fits slightly better with the multilingual layout.

These are all small factors, but together I think they make for a better keyboard layout.