keygen VS keyboards

I used one of the forks of xsznix's optimizer (I believe it was Tretygon/keygen) which adds a useful "SWAPPABLE_MAP" configuration that specifies which key positions the simulated annealing is allowed to change. I used this to freeze j and k in their Dvorak positions while optimizing the rest of the keys.

you might want to have a look at this https://github.com/Tretygon/keygen

I've had a hard time finding tools that let me analyze what keys I use most often. I've found https://github.com/Tretygon/keygen and http://mkweb.bcgsc.ca/carpalx/ thanks to this sub, but they both don't claim to analyze special characters, which are important to me as a software developer. Are there any off-the-shelf tools for analyzing a keyboard layout? I'm not interested in writing my own keylogger. I'm on macOS, for reference. I'd also be curious about Linux tools as well!

if you use a keyboard layout analyzer or evolutionary based generator like (https://github.com/Tretygon/keygen) , to create/analyze keymaps, is that not more based on scientific facts then?

I have custom alpha layers and extremely optimized symbol layers, combos and other features in my keymap. It is not designed for web development, but it is good for VIM and Java.

That made me think. If I would adapt Romak for 20 keys, it would be something like this:

But since you are a programmer, I invite you to check the fancy programmer features that I have implemented in my keymap. I still need to rework on the documentation, but you can take some inspiration from there if you decide to design your own.

Romak also has some very nice attributes, as do poqtea and uciea. I also find Canary to have a lot of merit.

There is also the unusual option to handwire a keyboard without soldering, as I did here, but the result might not be so reliable.

You can see my layout here.

I started my own layout, Romak, using BEAKL as inspiration, with similar objectives, mostly making it more suitable for my home language and reducing the load on pinkies and indexes, concentrating in the middle and ring fingers instead. Another thing I did was to remove the top row key from both the central and pinkie columns. Later I also removed the bottom row key from the pinkies.

My first handwired board checks all your requirements, and I have some pictures of the process, but it is not a complete guide. It might help though. And I think the FFKB case can be great for a first handwired project.

Really nice work, congrats. My custom layout is designed for both Portuguese and English, and I have some of the same ideas implemented, with similar reasoning. I also have some programming features that remind yours, but I preferred to remap hjkl instead.

I've used two different options in my builds. You can see them in the build logs: FFKB and Rommana.