engram VS keyboards

No problem, see this discussion on the Engram forums for more ideas on Q and Z placement: there are non-magical solutions such as combos, hold-taps, etc. In particular, this layout has been applied successfully to an even smaller 26+6 keyboard, as a precedent.

I've considered both the earlier version of APT, as well as Engram, with these layouts putting punctuation on the center index columns.

See my Engram 2.0 review as well as my programmer-friendly adaptation for details.

On leaving QWERTY, you might also consider Arno's Engram 2.0 layout, which places all punctuation in the central columns so that your 8 touch typing fingers go straight up and down, effectively staying in their columns all the time. I've used Engram exclusively since the past 2 years (after 6 months of BEAKL-15, 16 years of Dvorak, and 6 years of QWERTY) and I've written about my experience with it here. Moreover, if you prefer standard shifted pairs (e.g. so quotes don't shift into parentheses), I've created a programmer-friendly variant called the "Engrammer" layout that helps maintain cross-proficiency with standard keyboards.

And if you prefer standard shifted pairs (e.g. so quotes don't shift into parentheses), I've created a programmer-friendly variant called the "Engrammer" layout that helps maintain cross-proficiency with the standard shifting model.

The discussion on Github is here: https://github.com/binarybottle/engram/issues/46

Specifically, the main distinction between this layout and Arno's Engram, is that this layout retains standard shifting (e.g. Shift-Quote produces DoubleQuote rather than OpenParenthesis) in order to lower the cognitive barrier when having to use standard or non-programmable keyboards. This discussion elaborates further:

One of the few that acknowledge this is engram: https://github.com/binarybottle/engram

I've already talked with the dev to try to create a spanish variant of Engram, but since this is a subreddit of some keyboard layouts nerds like me who have some skills in creating layouts, I ask YOU if you could help create the perfect spanish layout. It's not easy, maybe too complex right now and there needs to be some adjustment... but come on, we NEED a spanish layout! 500 million of potential native writers will thank you for that in the long therm.

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.