Design

We start at Keyboard Layout Editor (KLE) of course. I initially set out to design an optimal layout for programmers, which was rather ambitious. The problem is that different programming environments have different needs. People using EMACS have different needs to people using Vim, who have different needs to people using a full-blown GUI for coding. So one-size-fits-all will not work.

But I didn't know that when I started....
What I ended up with, after a long process which is detailed on my blog, is the Programmers Keyboard which is currently a pre-defined template in KLE.
Programmers Keyboard initial release

I then developed it further and added bells and whistles, ending up with V2 which is what I thought I would build.

Programmers Keyboard final release

The Alpha key layout is a slightly modified version of Workman-P, meant to be programmer-friendly. I did what I thought was clever, and put the brackets down the middle, had all sorts of possibly-useful currency, Greek and punctuation symbols, one-touch copy/paste/cut/undo/redo/select-all, provision for dozenal/duodecimal support, Pomodoro timer, dual Nav clusters (idea being that lefties could swap them around), and a cool wooden case. In that respect I was aiming for something like what keyboard.io is doing.

And then Xah Lee came along to my blog and suggested, amongst other things, that maybe Workman wasn't the best layout....

Since Xah knows much more than me, that took me to the next phase of this voyage... looking for the best layout for English and programming. I restarted what I had been doing previously (searching for best layout, which led to Workman-P), and found various people had tackled the problem in a more scientific way. I eventually ended up at Patrick's Keyboard Layout Analyzer (KLA), where I spent many hours testing and improving layouts.

Somewhere along the way I met Den and we started trading notes on layouts. This lead via Arensito and ideas from Schizo to the ErgoLinear layout form factor, shown below, which produced the best scores in KLA. We had to modify KLA to accommodate this. In fact there are now three variants of this (one from me and two from Den).

ANSI 104, QWERTY
ErgoDox, MTGAP Thumbshift
ErgoLinear, X6

After playing some more, I eventually got to a layout which got the best scores on English and programming, and which I could not beat.

ErgoLinear X6.4

There are several unusual things about this layout:

• It follows the Arensito approach of putting the punctuation and numbers on AltGr.
• All the keys are the same size.
• The "h" is on the same key as Space, and requires AltGr to access. In spite of this, the scores are remarkable.
• The design is perfectly symetrical as far as the keys go.
• The conventional Ctrl-ZXCV layout is gone from the left, and replaced by a more compact layout on the right. In addition Ctrl-R (browser reload), Ctrl-M (menu), Ctrl-S (save), Ctrl-N (new) and Ctrl-Q (quit) are also more convenient. If you really need those on the left, then you could mirror-flip the whole design to get them back on the left.

Comparison of layouts vs X6.4

These are the scores as per Den's scoring on KLE. Den's scoring differs from the original in that vertical distance is also counted, as opposed to only horizontal. So it's more accurate. These scores are from the tests I used to compare layouts. Apart from the very technical digit and dates tests, this layout is far above others. Note: lower score is better, we are measuring Effort.

Rank	Layout	Style	All	English	Prog	OtherTech
1	X6.4H Ergolinear	Ergo	116.2	91.1	113.4	148
2	X6 Ergolinear	Ergo	117	98	113.7	141.5
3	BEAKL 4 Mod Ian AltGr 3	ANSI	123.7	100.5	118.3	156.8
4	MTGap TS ErgoLinear 2	Ergo	124.8	104.2	122.1	151.2
5	Maltron Ergolinear	Ergo	126.3	98.4	129	160.3
6	RSTHD ErgoLinear 2	Ergo	126.4	97.2	124.8	162.9
7	Colemak TS ErgoLinear 2	Ergo	126.7	101.3	119.5	160.1
8	Arensito Ergolinear	Ergo	127.7	110.8	119	151.1
9	Nawfal Ergolinear	Ergo	129.5	109.4	121.4	156.6
10	Dvorak Ergolinear	Ergo	130.6	111	128.4	155.5
11	BEAKL5 ErgoLinear	Ergo	131.4	109.1	126.4	160.4
12	schizoKBD-shifted	ANSI	133.9	101.4	120.8	181.8
13	Plum Ergolinear	Ergo	137.1	118.4	131.9	161.8
14	Arensito	ANSI	137.4	117.2	127.1	167.7
15	Arensito Kinesis	Ergo	139.7	111.3	132.3	177.1
16	Ergodox MTGAP Thumbshift	Ergo	159.2	105.1	141.4	231.2
17	Ian M3	ANSI	159.8	101.6	140.5	244.2
18	-+T+- HT02a	Ergo	162.5	91.8	137.2	257.2
19	Ergodox Colemak Thumbshift	Ergo	163.4	104.1	141.1	243.3
20	Ian R2 p	ANSI	163.8	101.8	136.3	255.9
21	Kinesis Advantage Svorak-r	Ergo	172.2	114.8	156.2	247.8
22	Maltron 90 Ergodox	Ergo	175.5	101.3	180.9	265.9
23	AOEYK	ANSI	177.8	112.2	179.5	265.7
24	Kinesis Advantage Colemak	Ergo	182.5	108.5	183.4	274.1
25	Right Pinky's Friend	ANSI	187.2	119.2	198.7	275.4
26	Ergodox Norman	Ergo	194.9	122.3	190.8	286
27	Ergodox QWERTY Thumbshift	Ergo	197.8	152.2	172.6	261.4
28	Dvorak Simplified (ie Standard)	ANSI	198.9	124.2	211.1	295.8
29	Aus der Neo-Welt	ANSI	199.3	116.2	186.6	315.1
30	Ian S2	ANSI	199.4	112	203.8	315.9
31	Halmak 1	ANSI	199.9	116.2	202.9	311.8
32	dangvu	ANSI	200.3	109.1	199.2	323.5
33	Vu Keys	ANSI	200.3	109	199.8	323.6
34	MTGAP	ANSI	200.8	117.2	206.3	311.9
35	SorenK	ANSI	200.9	117.1	199.2	314.4
36	Balance Twelve	ANSI	202.9	112.9	188.8	328.6
37	QGMLWY	ANSI	203.7	115.4	202.6	323
38	Burroughs Bower (typewriter)	ANSI	203.8	118.8	200.8	319.3
39	Colemak	ANSI	204.2	115.9	200.9	324.1
40	Klausler	ANSI	204.3	114.5	207.4	324.5
41	Seruxie	ANSI	205.7	119.2	202.8	323.1
42	HIEAMTSRN	ANSI	205.9	114.5	204.4	329.5
43	DreymaR	ANSI	206.4	122.1	208.3	319.4
44	Kinesis Advantage Qwerty	Ergo	207.5	154.4	207.2	273.4
45	Workman	ANSI	207.6	121.5	206.1	324.1
46	BLOU	ANSI	208.1	121.5	209.4	324.4
47	Capewell	ANSI	210.4	123.8	205.4	328.7
48	Yak	ANSI	210.5	126.3	206.4	325.1
49	Minimak 12-key	ANSI	210.5	126.7	207.6	324.5
50	EAton	ANSI	210.6	116	204.2	340
51	Norman	ANSI	210.8	126.7	207.9	325.1
52	Ergodox QWERTY	Ergo	213.3	157.4	207.1	284.3
53	QWERTY	ANSI	229.8	161.3	224.6	323.7
54	XPeRT	ANSI	233.1	159.3	226.7	334.5
55	BvoFRak EN V0.5	ANSI	234.7	111.7	185.3	415.4
56	Dvorak Programmer	ANSI	238.3	124.5	196.6	404.4
57	TNWMLC (Worst CarpalX)	ANSI	247.1	191	238.7	325.2
58	Colemak Programmer	ANSI	251.9	116.6	202.6	449.3
59	Workman Programmers	ANSI	255.7	122.1	210.1	449.8
60	QWERTY Programmer	ANSI	274.3	162.3	230.2	438.6

Note: you can find and play with these layouts on my fork of Den's fork of Patrick's KLA here: http://kla.keyboard-design.com
Or you can compare results here: keyboard-design.com/best-layouts.html.

For the purposes of actually making the keyboard, I added back the numpad and navigation, giving us this final mockup. (click to enlarge)

ErgoLinear X6.5

The modifier keys use symbols rather than words. The design is borrowed from and inspired by (for the new keys) Mito's Bauhaus Icons design. I don't know the copyright status on those ideas.

This is actually the 6.5 variant not the 6.4... only difference is the : and ; are swapped around. I ordered the keycaps while I was still testing, and it looked like 6.5 would beat 6.4. Turns out it didn't.

The numpad layout is also unconventional, based on most frequently used digits. It also has other commonly-needed punctuation and Tab keys in the cluster. In truth I still want to optimize the numpad layout, so the final version might differ.

Fonts

If, like me, you're doing something non-standard, you'll need a way of printing the keycaps, which we'll get to in the next section. But part of the design is picking the font to be used.

The starting point is usually Signature Plastic's famous Gorton Modified, which looks like this:


Gorton Modified

Gorton Modified (Carbon colour scheme)

However SP insists that it does not exist in an electronic form, so we look for alternatives... In general, we want a sans serif font, because keys are not generally flat and/or smooth, and the printing processes have limitations, which means they can't do the fine serifs so well.

The key (pardon the pun) points (ditto) of Gorton Modified are:

• sans serif
• the 1 does not have a foot
• the 3 has a sharp top
• the 4 is closed
• the & is traditional style, closed
• the $ has a single vertical full-length bar
• the Q has a straight bar crossing the circle
• the R and K angle downstrokes are offset from the junction
• the G does not have a vertical bar
• the I has no top or bottom
• the J has no bar and does not descend below the baseline
• the M has straight sides and middle only goes halfway down
• the ? and ! have round dots
• the I (upper-i) and l (lower-L) look the same

For KLE, Ian Prest actually bought Engravers Gothic font, which is similar to Gorton Modified but not identical. It has small caps rather than lower case, and looks like this:

Engravers Gothic

The Reddit/MechanicalKeyboards wiki has a list of fonts used on commercial keyboards.

For this keyboard, it was actually more difficult than expected to find a replacement font, mainly because I have marked the keys with the lower case letters as well as capitals. I found lots of fonts, but the similarity between I (upper-i) and l (lower-L) was too much. In general, I was looking for:

• Something very similar to Gorton Modified, but... with
• clear distinction between I (upper-i) and l (lower-L)
• clear distinction between 0 (zero) and O (upper-o)
• clear distinction between ~ (tilde) and - (dash/minus)
• wide glyph support, including Greek letters and non-standard punctuation
• good size on ,.;: (comma period semi-colon colon) to tell them apart

So I stared at a lot of fonts. Went through the entire sans serif selection on Google Fonts, as well as whatever I had on my system, as well as programming fonts and other places with free and not free fonts to download.

One suggested replacement is the commercial font Gotham Rounded medium, which looks like this: (click image for larger view)

Gotham Rounded medium

There is a font which goes by the name Armani, which is available to install on Android phones via the iFont package. However I was unable to track it down online, either by name or characteristics search or even image search. So I don't know what it actually is... the metadata in the file have names from well-known foundries but I can't find it on their sites. It looks like this, which is very close to Gorton apart from the upper-i which has a top and bottom: (click image for larger view)

"Armani" (?)

Which brings us to the free options. One possibility is Source Sans Pro (available for example from Google Fonts), and which looks like this:

Source Sans Pro

It does differentiate between upper-i and lower-L, but the tilde is a little flat, and it lacks some of the punctuation and Greek glyhs, which means I ended up with Hack.

Hack is an open source typeface designed for programmers. It looks like this:

Hack font

All the possibly-confusing characters are clearly distinguished. The ,.;: are good sizes. Apart from those characters, Hack has good coverage of the other glyphs I need. Yes the zero is controversial, and the typographic quotes could be prettier, but all things considered, I think it looks okay. It's not Gorton Modified but it will do.

Other options to consider, if you only need conventional characters:

• Arial
• Tahoma
• Verdana
• Helvetica
• VAG Rounded
• San Francisco
• DejaVu Sans
• Corbert
• Fabrika
• Nauman Regular
• Quicksand
• Lato
• Google's Product Sans
• Pangram
• Moon
• Gilroy light
• Aileron
• Xaomi's Mi Lanting font, based on Google Roboto
• Overpass (sans or mono)
• Meticula

I put together a comparative view of the most similar fonts to Gorton Modified that I could find, and scored them by subtracting the "not very similar" glyphs. The glyphs highlighted are because:

• square dots instead of round
• glyph shape "too" different (which is a bit subjective. Some punished more than others. Many not be consistent.)

So the top fonts after that exercise are

• Gotham Book Rounded (commercial)
• Metropolis (opensource)
• Zona Pro Regular (commercial; light and bold are available free)
• Gotham Book (commerical, like Rounded but ends of glyphs are square)
• Proxima Soft / Nova Soft (commercial)
• Armani (status known... may be commercial)
• Ricardo (commercial)
• Arial (commercial, you probably have it if on Windows)

For your viewing pleasure, here are ANSI104 mockups. Click image for widescreen view.

Gotham Rounded

Metropolis

Zona Pro

Proxima Soft

Armani

Ricardo

Arial

But wait! There's more....

If you want something like Gorton Modified, but perhaps a bit more modern and/or stylish, take a look at Quicksand (free) or Atami (free)

Quicksand Medium

Atami

Or how about something more modern with a techy feel? Use Prime (free)

Prime

Next: Components and tools.