User:VTSGsRock/the Hanster Keyboard Layout

The Hanster keyboard layouts are keyboard layouts that strive to be as well-rounded and comprehensive as possible, designed with a wide variety of ergonomic criteria. The result is a series of progressively updated layouts.

The current recommended version is Hanster-23.

Penalty Matrix

This penalty matrix was used in the design process of the Hanster keyboard layouts, with some modifications.

Finger Dexterity

Ideally, longer fingers should be above shorter fingers.

• 1: Pinky types key above index
• 1.5: Ring types key above middle
• 4: Pinky types key above middle
• 4.5: Pinky and ring type two keys off home row - called pinky ring gymnastics
• 2.78*Distance: Same finger types a different key (index)
• 3.18*Distance: Same finger types a different key (middle)
• 4.18*Distance: Same finger types a different key (ring)
• 10.2*Distance: Same finger types a different key (pinky)
• 1*Distance: Same finger types first and third key in trigram
• 1: Lateral movement of index or pinky into center (begins outward roll only) or outside column

Other Pinky Interactions

• 1: Pinky moves from home row (including outside column) - applies to unigrams only
• 2: Outward roll from ring to pinky

Row Jumps

Row jumps should be minimized, especially scissors, which are typed between adjacent fingers:

• 1: Pinky and Index type two keys that skip over home row
• 3: Pinky and Middle or Ring and Index type 2 keys that skip over home row
• 5: Pinky and Ring, Ring and Middle, or Middle and Index type 2 keys that skip over home row (scissor)
• 7: Same finger types 2 keys that skip over home row

Roll Reversals

Roll reversals are also called redirects, seesaws, or pinballing. They involve three keys on the same hand that change direction (e.g. fas on QWERTY). Nevertheless, piano players have less trouble because they practice these movements more, but pianos and keyboards have little in common in regards to optimization.

• 2: Roll reversal with index not moving laterally
• 4: Roll reversal without using index finger or involving lateral movement

Hanster-23 + Hanster-21 Thumb Keyboard Layouts (Latest Recommended Layouts)

Hanster-23 is the latest recommended layout. It is the same as Hanster-21 except that X and dash are swapped. By moving L back to the bottom middle finger and placing C in pinky instead, SFBs are improved significantly and pinky finger repeats are significantly improved at slight expense of increased row jumps and lower finger dexterity. Still, it maintains good roll directions, low pinky ring gymnastics, and extremely low roll reversals.

Hanster-21S

QYOUX KMLPB
HIEA. DTRCN;
J-',/ VGWFZ
S

Hanster-21N

QYOUX ZMLPB
HIEA. DTRCS;
J-',/ KGWFV
N

Hanster-21R

QYOUX ZDLFB
HIEA. PTNSC;
J-',/ KGMWV
R

Hanster-21L

QYOUX KGNFV
HIEA. DTRCS;
J-',/ WMZPB
L

Hanster-21 Layouts (conditionally recommended)

Hanster-21

Hanster-21 has low same finger usage, scissors, row jumps, pinky-ring gymnastics, and roll reversals, at slight expense of the NRL column. It is named for being the second layout created after Hanster-19. Hanster-19's name modelled after BEAKL 19 bis, which shares over half of Hanster-19's keys.

This layout was developed as a compromise between Hanster-19 and 20 and builds on these strengths. I kept the left hand, right hand index, and right hand middle fingers intact from Hanster-20 but rearranged the right hand pinky & ring to reduce awkward pinky ring combos.

• Swapped S and C. While this increases ring-pinky outward rolls, I didn't like how S on pinky made a bit of awkward combos (SW/WS and SM/MS), so I just swapped it.
• M is now an SFB on ring rather than a pinky ring gymnastic, which is slightly more optimal.
• F was moved to top row at the expense of FL, but I didn't want it to be on pinky and I was really able to take advantage of the extremely rare FS sfb since FT does too much SFBs. NF is also almost as common as FL+LF combined.
• W takes the place of F on Hanster-20 and B on Hanster-19 and only SW/WS is the significant pinky ring gymnastic. It remains on top row to avoid the WN row jump and to take advantage of the fact that WR is less common than RV (pinky above home row ring and below home row ring are just as bad. W hardly pairs with C as well compared to T, R, and S.

This layout also has the lowest pinky usage by having C on consonant hand pinky instead of S, ascending Hanster-21 to the likes of Hands Down Titanium/Rhodium/Vibranium (although Hands Down Titanium has lower pinky usage at BJX, Vibranium has higher movement at WBP or WBF, and Rhodium has higher movement at XPW).

Superseded versions (Conditionally Recommended)

Hanster-22

Hanster-22 replaces C with L on the home row, and moves M to bottom middle finger. This improves scissors, row jumps, and finger dexterity at expense of slightly higher same finger usage and L on piny. It also enables D to be moved off the center column for G for lower lateral stretches. It also maintains good roll directions (middle-pinky outward rolls decreased at expense of higher ring-pinky), low pinky ring gymnastics, and extremely low roll reversals.

Hanster-20

Hanster-20 improves from Hanster-19 by changing the bottom row to BPLMF to lower awkward combinations with the pinky (SP replaced with SM/MS), same finger usage (PT, BT, and FS vs. FT and BS) and ring-pinky outward rolls at the cost of some higher pinky movement (F vs. B)

Hanster-19

Hanster-19, an earlier variation of Hanster-20, has B on bottom pinky instead of F, for lower pinky usage at the expense of higher pinky same finger usage and SP pinky-ring gymnastic.

Hanster-Heiwa (June 2024)

JUOP- KDLCB
AIEHY MTSRNZ
,.'X/ VGWFQ

Hanster-Heiwa puts H on the index, further lowering SFBs, roll reversals, and off-home center column usage compared to Hanster-Down, at the expense of higher pinky and ring usage nad pinky-ring outward rolls.

Hanster-Down Thumb Layouts (June 2024)

These thumb variations were made back when Hanster-Down was the recommended version. However, Hanster-19 improves on them with vowels on left hand to improve the vowel cluster (Z is replaced by Q to avoid IZ being uncomfortable to type). Nevertheless, the consonant block highly resembles the Hanster-21 thumb layouts so I conditionally recommend them.

Hanster-Neteru

BPLMK XUOYJ
SCRTD .AEIH;
QFWGV /,'-Z
N

Hanster-Ribbon

BFLDV XUOYJ
CSNTP .AEIH;
QWMGK /,'-Z
R

Archived Layouts (NO LONGER RECOMMENDED)

Hanster-Down (formerly Hanster-Neu) (June 2024)

QCLDB ZUOYJ;
RSNTP ,AEIH;
WFMGV -,'XK

Hanster-21 improves on pinky-ring gymnastics, at slight expense of the NRL column. But the tradeoffs are really worth it to Hanster-21. I really disliked the "FR" pattern and when I swapped the CSF and LNM columns, it still got "RM", and "WN".

Hanster-Taisho (June 2024)

QFLCB XUOYJ
RSNDP .AEIH
ZWMGV /,'-K
T

I did not design a T thumb variant for Hanster-19 because it caused K to move to trickier positions due to lack of space (even on bottom pinky it causes awkward patterns with I), and how it frequently pairs with R, S, and N.

Hanster-Sandy (June 2024)

QFLDB XUOYJ
RCNTP .AEIH
ZWMGV -,'/K
S

Hanster-19S further improves on the vowel cluster by removing K from the vowel hand. This layout is no longer recommended due to K's awkward sequences with the somewhat common KI and IK, but unlike T, an S-on-thumb layout was designed as part of the Hanster-19 series because it doesn't displace T.

Hanster-2-KVWZ (June 2024)

This redesign "improves" from Hanster-2 by moving K to the vowel hand (something I regret), W to T column, putting D on the same row as V, and putting Z in W's place. These changes were made back when I overvalued disjointed same finger usage so much that I applied it to finger dexterity and row jumps. I no longer consider applying disjointed bigrams to finger dexterity and row jumps, and lower the weight of disjointed same finger usage.

Hanster-2 (June 2024)

JYOU/ KDLCB HIEA. GTRSNQ ';Z,X VMWFP Where the Hanster layout began, and where its successors frequently return to. It has lower disjointed same finger usage (not very important) but high pinky movement, and this led to a search for even more efficient layouts with lower pinky movement.

Unpublished layouts (NEVER RECOMMENDED)

Hanster-1 (April 2024)

'YOU- KGCWJ/=\
HIEA, MTSRNQ
BXZ.; VDFLP

This accidentally became the prototype of my Hanster layout because I was never able to publish it on Reddit due to containing some website that was blocked by Reddit's filters (justpaste.it hosted the original documentation of the Hanster keyboard layout). As you can see, my Hanster-21 layout is a huge improvement over this.

Hanster-Webmak (December 2023)

XFCGD /UOYJ
RNSTL IAEHP'
BWMKV .,;ZQ

This was created at the end of 2023, and I was dissappointed with how poor it performed despite being made by an evolutionary optimizer (specifically, Dario Götz's). Because this had a different design criteria despite also being named "Hanster", I wouldn't call this Hanster-1.

Webmak (December 2023)

I also created 3 layouts called "Webmak" with Dario Götz's keyboard layout optimizer at the end of 2023, but these files are lost. Webmak-1 shifted all punctuation, Webmak-2 only optimized letters, and Webmak-3 optimized letters but kept ZXCV in place.

QWPY (February 2020)

QWPYF JURL;
ASETG HNIOD
ZXCVB KM,./

This was my first attempt at keyboard layout design. I opted for a keyboard layout similar to QWERTY, back then when I preferred QWERTY similarity over ergonomics, and was highly skeptical of layouts very divergent from QWERTY. I only accounted for letter frequencies, and obviously this layout is trash because that was before I knew of SFBs, try typing "peace" or "non-unionized" on this layout for example.

Hanster-Nuked (NEVER RECOMMENDED; THE WORST KEYBOARD LAYOUT IN THE WORLD)

I decided to follow Carpalx to use my penalty matrix to create the worst layout possible. In my case, I decided to try to burden the pinkies with SFBs and movement as much as possible. This layout has 59.33% pinky usage, 45.41% pinky movement, and 21.526% SFBs on the pinky! I have yet to see a layout that puts this much usage and SFBs on the pinky.

• Maximizes usage, same finger usage, row jumps, and lateral movement on pinky
• If not applicable, prioritize pinky ring gymnastics (off-home row)
• Places THE trigram (by far the most common) entirely typed with the pinky moving up and down on the same finger
• ING and ION are extremely uncomfortable trigrams with pinky ring gymnastics
• The BPLMF bottom row on Hanster-20 is now on the same finger (this time on index).

Finger usage:

• Pinky: 59.33%
• Ring: 21.01%
• Middle: 5.47%
• Index: 14.19%

Comparison to other keyboard layouts that aimed to be the worst

• TNWMLC uses the pinky 34% at the time and the ring finger is only use at 9%. It has extreme hand assymetry. However, it only optimizes for the same positions on QWERTY.
• Slash/Dot UFC aims to minimize middle finger usage and have extreme hand assymetry at 39% to 61%. However, it prefers to increase SFBs and usage on the index finger instead. As a result, pinky usage is only at 16% compared to almost 75% on index.
• UFO was optimized to score the worst on the Colemak Mod-DH analyzer. It has 34.5% SFB total.
• Epicmak puts the two most common letters on the pinky corners, moves letters away from home row and splits most used characters apart to make rolls awkward or slower. However, this decreases SFBs as a result.