Qwpr: yet another minimak-like, better for programmers/international

[Jameson Quinn]

I've released the Qwpr layout. Like minimak, it moves a minimal number of keys (11), and keeps most of those (9) on the same finger. However, I think it has a few advantages:

   - By using capslock as a second style of shift, it makes punctuation and arrow keys available in the main area.

        - Backspace is still available on Tab, and Tab is available on backquote and capslock-L.

   - Designed for international use, it has good access to over 1000 unicode characters (!)

   - I think it's actually slightly better as a layout. In particular, I don't like how minimak has I and E on the same finger. This is probably because Qwpr was designed as a holistic layout, while Minimak was apparently designed to skim the most benefits with each sequential swap.

 

If I'd known about Minimak when I was starting my keyboard transition, I'd probably just have gone with that. But now that I've done the work for Qwpr, I think it's better.

I also have comparison tables on both (subjective) features and metrics for a number of alternative keyboards.

I'd love to get opinions from people in this forum. Because it's so similar to minimak-12 (only 6 keys of Qwpr are different from both QWERTY and Minimak), it's actually quite feasible to switch.

[Ted Lilley]

This is Jameson's reply to an email I sent accidentally off-list:

Replies inline.

2013/3/18 Ted Lilley

Hey there, welcome to the board.

I'm a big fan of the idea of alternative shifts.  I do a similar thing with my own autohotkey script that makes the right-alt into a shift/esc combo key.  I like having this alternate shift on a thumb since it frees your hands to reach the entire rest of the keyboard rather than risk giving you emacs-pinky (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emacs#Emacs_pinky

).

My alternate shift is also available on AltGr (windows) or option (OSX), which can be reached with the thumbs.

 

 It's a great idea, I just didn't want to take the time to map out a whole alternate keyboard for punctuation etc before releasing minimak.  I also think that the audience for minimak is people who don't want to learn an entire rearrangement of keys, and putting in an alternate shift kinda blows that aesthetic.  I personally like the idea though.

Note that the punctuation in qwpr is still available in its QWERTY locations too.

 

Great to see some international focus, too.  I'm not able to provide that.  If anyone sees some ideas in your layout that can be brought into minimak to make it internationally friendly, I'm all ears.  Of course, the placement of the letters is English-biased since it has to choose some language, so I don't expect the basic character layout to change.

Of course. The basic international idea in my layout are to have custom dead keys. Each of them has a "core" accent which it provides, but also gives the characters you'd expect from the languages which heavily use that core accent. Thus there's some duplication of accented characters. For instance, the ´ accent, heavily used in Spanish and French, also holds the ñ, ü, and ç characters; while the ¨ accent, heavily used in German, also holds ß. 

There are a few changes in this regard I'm still considering. First, moving the ¨ accent to the semicolon key, which in normal text and programming is always followed by whitespace and so could still be used normally. Second, I've done some work in consolidating Polish, Turkish, and Scandinavian onto one dead key each, but I think I can still do better.

Regarding I and E, I spent a lot of time seeing if there weren't a way to just push a little further and place them apart, but alas, it wasn't possible to rearrange them without abandoning the principles I employed.  I'm very averse to your solution, which is to put e on the right-hand pinky.  This is very bad for ergonomics, as most people I've talked to with RSI problems have the worst issues on the pinky and third finger.  E belongs on any of the other three fingers before the pinky.

I'd be interested to see some data on how much of the pinky issues are from stretches (including backspace, return, and shift) rather than the home position key. I know it's probably hard to find such data, but my own experience is that I found dvorak L (on qwerty P) intolerable, but have no trouble with Qwpr E.

I suppose I could swap Qwpr E and D. That would put E on the same finger as P and C, though, and CE is actually more common than IE. And there's no way I'm moving C(opy).

I'd do some more research on ergonomics and put some hard thought into those two issues, the placement of E and of making the caps-lock a frequently-held key.  There's some evidence to point to these as potential issues.  Not to say that the layout isn't good for people who don't have RSI issues, but I would feel remiss not taking them into account.

I think that with improved access to return and backspace, and with alternate locations for the second shift, Qwpr is actually significantly easier on the pinkies than QWERTY, and arguably competitive with Minimak. Obviously that's a judgment call, weighting pinky stretches as far worse than home-key pinky use. I'm reluctant to make further changes to the position of E. If I were going to make one further swap, it would probably be  H/M or H/D, to reduce lateral movement.

Jameson

ps. Any reason you replied off-list?

[Ted Lilley]

Great answers all.  The improvements with pinky stretches are definitely a plus, perhaps enough to offset the issues I mentioned.  Obviously it was something I couldn't consider in my design.

Regarding moving E, I'd still give it thought since it is so disproportionately used in English, but your other considerations may mitigate it suitably.  That's something that requires tough-to-acquire data.  If you were to move it, however, the only moves I considered acceptable would be to move semicolon with it, or u.  It just offended me aesthetically to have a punctuation mark in the middle of the layout, and I couldn't work u in well enough to stick to my other principles.  Even Minimak-12 moves more keys than I think my intended audience should want, which is why I recommend Minimak-8 for most people.  Anyone who'd design their own layout is outside my intended audience. :)

As far as metrics go, you might be interested in the digraph metric I'm developing for my next layout, which has a different audience.  It'll be aimed more squarely at geeks like us.  You can find the post I wrote about it here: http://forum.colemak.com/viewtopic.php?id=1623