patorjk / keyboard-layout-analyzer

MIT License
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Issue with AltGr layouts #15

Open iandoug opened 4 years ago

iandoug commented 4 years ago

Hi Patrick

If you're going to be spending time on this again, there is something you should look at.

Your scoring model favours layouts which use the AltGr combinations. This is because the right thumb typically sits on the AltGr key, thus does not move sideways much, but does go up and down a lot. However your scoring only counts lateral movement, not vertical.

In Den's first fork, he added counting vertical distance moved. We picked 4mm vertical distance since that is more or less typical for mechanical keyboards. So each key press adds 8mm to the horizontal distance travelled.

This same issue applies to the various Ergo layouts which put a shift key on the left thumb. This doesn't make as drastic a difference as the AltGr but still boosts the score over conventional shift.

Cheers, Ian Cheers, Ian