alternative keyboard layouts (NOT Dvorak)

Started fiddling with alternative keyboard layouts a few days ago.

I strongly dislike the Dvorak keyboard that seems to be so popular with the type of people who use Linux as their OS, prepare their shopping lists with LaTeX, and think [snarl]lojban[/snarl] is tolerable. The Dvorak layout is fantastically ugly, an artifact of a mind that had fair engineering skills and little or no humanity/aesthetics.

I'm working on something that would be much easier for QWERTY users to learn. My layout is optimized for right-handed Anglophones.



In English we spend a lot of our time typing THE, AND and -ING over and over again. My layout makes typing THE a quick, easy inward sweep of the right hand's strongest fingers and moves high-frequency letters such as E, T and N into the "home row." My goal is to change only 9 or 10 keys, leaving the remainder of QWERTY intact.

Here are some other alternative keyboards I found on the web:

a less-than-brilliant alphabetical layout

a more intelligent alphabetical keyboard (but what the hell did they do with the space bar?)

FrogPad (a one-hand keyboard)

ULD 2.7 update

Just uploaded a revision to ULD 2.7 containing about 70 corrections and updates to the German vocabulary.

I'm thinking about adding another conlang to the project. Also, some online friends have indicated they might add Finnish and Polish. It would be very nice to get some additional languages in the mix.

personal note: time out for chaos

Right after recovering from nearly drowning in a germy pond, I'm having to help my best friend cope with a major illness. When you're sitting in the emergency room watching the only person you can stand to be around drift in and out of consciousness and shivering with pain, blogging doesn't seem very important. But I'll be back when the madness subsides.