Principles for Keyboard Layouts (2022)

Custom layouts & symbol placement

• Many participants describe heavily customized layouts, especially for programming symbols and brackets.
• Strategies include putting parentheses on modifier keys, using home-row or thumb-accessible layers for symbols, or adopting multi-layer systems like Neo2.
• Some favor chording approaches (steno-like dictionaries for symbols, shortcuts, cursor movement) to avoid deep layer stacks.

Personalization via keylogging and analyzers

• Strong interest in tools that record keystrokes to optimize layouts around personal usage.
• Concerns about security/privacy, but several argue local, non-persistent or aggregated logging is acceptable.
• Suggested tools: layout analyzers, heatmaps, “benign” keyloggers, and genetic algorithms (e.g., Halmak). Some think generic corpora are “good enough”; others insist context-aware logging is needed, especially to capture backspace, cursor use, and shortcuts.

Alternative letter layouts

• Dvorak, Colemak (and variants like Colemak-DH), Workman, Norman, Neo2/KOY, nrts-haei family (Graphite, Gallium) are discussed.
• Reported benefits: comfort, reduced finger travel, especially for those with pain or poor QWERTY habits.
• Reported downsides: modest real speed gains, cognitive overhead, using other people’s machines, and mobile/TV keyboards.
• Several long-term alternative-layout users say they remain fluent enough in QWERTY; others found dual-layout use too hard.

Hardware ergonomics: split, ortho, keywells, thumb clusters

• Split boards (Moonlander, Glove80, Keyboardio, Lily58, Corne, Charybdis, Voyager, etc.) are popular for posture and RSI relief.
• Disagreement over thumb clusters: some love many well-placed thumb keys; others experience pain from reach/rotation.
• Ortho vs stagger: some find ortholinear or column-stagger clearly better; others report it feels unnatural and prefer traditional staggering or keywells.
• Keywells (e.g., Glove80, Advantage-style) get praise for comfort and number-row reach; some still revert to standard boards for one-handed use or convenience.

Layers, mods, and function/navigation keys

• Heavy use of layers, home-row mods, and mod-tap keys to keep hands on home row.
• Some argue layers are fine even for frequent keys if thumb-activated; others avoid holding layers for common actions due to discomfort.
• Divided views on function keys and full navigation clusters: some consider them mandatory; others rarely use them and prefer layer-based arrows (often Vim-style).

Learning & usability

• One camp advises avoiding keycap labels and cheat sheets to force faster muscle-memory learning.
• Another emphasizes labeling and printed references, especially when juggling multiple boards and complex layers, and for occasional users of one’s keyboard.