It consists of three main layers:
- The Main Layer (the plain Latin alphabet), which can by typed without any modifier keys. It is optimized for English, Spanish, French, and German using a brute-force algorithm using letter frequency data from practicalcryptography.com. The letters are assigned into groups based on the Workman Layout key ratings, with the most frequent letters going on the best keys. The algorithm looks at each group and checks every possible permutation of letters to find the best score to avoid same-finger bigrams, outward rolls, and certain uncomfortable double-row jumps. The results is comparable to Colemak and Dvorak in terms of same-finger bigrams (a bit worse than both but much better than QWERTY), although it has a lot more satisfying inward rolls than Colemak does, and it provided me with a more enjoyable typing experience than another layout I came up with that beats Colemak and Dvorak in most stats but has a lot of outward rolls.
- The Special Character Layer (which is accessed by pressing the Alt-Gr (right alt) key or the Ctrl+Alt keys and pressing a letter key). This layer is not machine optimized, but many letters go along with related letters (so for example, c maps to ç, k maps to ƙ, g maps to ğ, and n maps to ñ); otherwise, I tried to put the most frequent letters into the best spots and avoid any obnoxious same finger bigrams on different keys.
- The Deadkey Layer (which accessed by pressing Alt-Gr keys or Ctrl+Alt keys followed by a number or punctuation key which activates the deadkey, and then finally another key is pressed to create the desired character. Many deadkeys can be chained together. It requires more keystrokes to use this layer than the Special Character Layer, but the Deadkey Layer provides support for almost any conceivable Latin-script language, as well as most IPA symbols (although I'm still working on full IPA support and I'm not sure if it's completely feasable). Most deadkeys will generate a combining diacritic mark when you press the space bar, which allows you to type languages that do not have full Unicode support (such as Navajo and accented Yoruba)
- The Vietnamese alphabet is too complex to be well served by a multilingual keyboard layout and would do better with its own dedicated layout. However, it can be typed on this layout with the deadkeys.
- There are a few low-frequency letters in the French alphabet (ë, ï, ÿ, and æ) that do not appear on the Special Character layer and must be typed using deadkeys. This does not noticeably impact the typing experience in French.
- The Spanish punctuation keys ¿ and ¡ can be typed on the extra key that appears on the ISO layout, and the º and ᵃ ordinal indicators that are used in Spanish and Portuguese can be typed using key using the Special Character Layer. However, an ANSI keyboard (the most common format in the US) is missing this key, so on these keyboards the deadkey layer must be used.
- The Yoruba language has three tones: do, re, and mi (low, mid, and high). It may be written with or without tone marks (a grave accent for do, an acute accent for mi, and the occasional macron for re if there's any ambiguity); for example, BBC Yoruba uses tone marks in headlines but not in the main articles. Accentless Yoruba can be typed using only the Main and Special Character layers, but deadkeys are required to type accents on the letters ẹ, ọ, and n; sadly, there are no Unicode symbols for ẹ and ọ with accent marks, so a combining diacritic mark must be added with a deadkey. Some prefer a vertical line instead of a dot below because this is visible even when a word is underlined; this symbol may be added to a letter using a deadkey.
- English (1.348 billion speakers)
- Spanish (543 million)
- French (267 million)
- Portuguese (258 million)
- Indonesian (excl. Malay) (199 million)
- Standard German (135 million)
- Turkish (88 million)
- Hausa (75 million)
- Swahili (69 million)
- Javanese (68 million)
- Italian (68 million)
- Nigerian Pidgin (48 million)
- Filipino (excl. Tagalog) (45 million)
- Yoruba (43 million)
I'm pretty please with and excited about this layout, but sadly I don't have a very good name for it. I originally called it the QUFLXÜ layout but then I didn't want to have to keep changing the name every time I moved the keys around (which I have done several times) so I called it the Deinonysus Multilingual Layout, or DeinonML for short. But the problem is that I don't think that's very memorable and people would be confused about the spelling and pronunciation. I'd like something punchy and memorable that references its multilingual nature. Since we're all language lovers here, I'm wondering if you guys might be able to help me out with a good name.
Any suggestions?