So I’m at work so I can’t do quite the write up I’d like to.

Here’s a database of a lot of keymaps that have been developed: https://keymapdb.com/?keyCount=1-36&stagger=columnar

and here is a write up of homerow mods: https://precondition.github.io/home-row-mods

Homerow mods are hard to zero in on but if you can get used to it, it’s really nice. I get misfires but it’s not that often. An alternative to HRM is One Shot Mods. I’ve seen it around but haven’t used it much but the idea is that a key like Shift would get buffered and then attached to the next keystroke, so fer example, tap Shift and then release and tap a for a capital A. Some people swear by it. I personally just stuck with HRM. having Ctrl and Shift in homerow, under my fingers and saving pinky strain has bee amazing.

For the database like, check out bsag, kkga, and callum for some other tiny board layouts. There is a lot of smart stuff in there. Hypership is one I keep looking at and can be found here: https://keebogram.pages.dev/hypership/

My personal layout is a weird amalgamation of Miyoku, kkga, and a this write up for my symbols: https://getreuer.info/posts/keyboards/symbol-layer/index.html

For something not Colemak, look into Workman, Canary, and Hands Down. They take Colemak’s ideas and seem to try and fix the trouble spots. For example, Canary takes the last remaining lesser used pinky keys and moves them to the inner lateral column for index finger. I really wish I had the time to learn Canary because I think it’s probably as close to a good layout that typing in English can probably be made. Colemak does a lot of good but it benefits from still having quite a few keys where they are in QWERTY so it’s easier to pick up.

I tried linking my keymap but Lemmy’s being dumb.