Keyboard Layouts Doc (3rd Edition)
A community-authored reference document on alternative keyboard layouts, written by ec0 (Discord handle) with substantial contributions and review from the AKL (Alternative Keyboard Layouts) Discord community. Notable contributors include Oxey, ClemenPine, StronglyTyped, Brys, Semi, Eve, Lela, Smudge, Heart, Whorf, Flarefin, Tanamr, Kyrime, Colby, and Desshaw.
Link: Google Doc (3rd edition)
Edition history
- 1st edition — original document; used images for layout display, which made it slow to load.
- 2nd edition — rewrote layouts in text format for faster loading and easier comparison; added stats analysis with colour-coded ratings; reorganised layouts into categories.
- 3rd edition (current, January 2025) — adopted Google Docs tabs for easier navigation; same content as 2nd edition at launch, with all future updates going here only.
Structure
The document is approximately 19 chapters organised into six parts:
| Part | Chapters | Covers |
|---|---|---|
| Part 1 — Typing basics | 1—2 | Touch typing fundamentals, home row, learning strategy, angle mod, ANSI vs ISO keyboard standards |
| Part 2 — English data | 3 | Letter frequency, bigram frequency, trigram frequency for English — the raw data that layout design optimises against |
| Part 3 — Layout metrics | 4—8 | Same Finger Bigrams (SFBs), Same Finger Skipgrams (SFS), scissors, Lateral Stretch Bigrams (LSBs), alternation, rolls, redirects, and other stats used to evaluate layouts |
| Part 4 — Building blocks | 9—12 | Letter columns (which letters share a finger), how to construct layouts from columns, consonant and vowel column design |
| Part 5 — Layout categories | 13—18 | Classifies layouts into groups (e.g. by design philosophy or home row), with examples, stats, and guidance on how to build layouts in each category |
| Part 6 — Consonant deep dive | 19 | Per-consonant analysis of optimal pairings and columns; a detailed extension of the column material in Part 4 |
PKM decomposition
This document was exported and decomposed into individual notes in this vault:
- Touch Typing and Finger Assignment — from chapters 1.1 through 1.8
- Angle Mod — from chapter 2
- Keyboard Layout Metrics — from chapters 4 through 8
- Thumb Keys in Layout Design — from chapter 12
- Layout Design Philosophy — from chapter 13
- Colemak DH — from chapter 14
- Layout Candidates Compared — from chapters 13 through 18