Shena'Fu's touch keyboard layouts
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Shena'Fu designed a collection of layouts for touch screens, intended to be more ergonomic and efficient on such devices.
They can be installed as extensions for the open-source Anysoftkeyboard app for Android.
Design philosophy[edit | edit source]
The main philosophy behind these layouts is to put the most common letters in the best positions. Each layout may be best used for different usage style, such as 1-finger or stylus typing. 2-thumb typing, swiping, twyping (combination of typing and swiping), etc. Moreover, the space is considered as another letter. Many of these layouts include the numbers keys (usually on the left edge, or in the center in the case of split layouts) and common punctuations. More keys means smaller keys, thus less distance between keys and faster access to non-letter characters.
Layouts[edit | edit source]
TEA Ring layout[edit | edit source]
Based on the fact that TEA are the most common letters across many languages, it makes most sense to put these letters in the center of the screen. Then the remaining letters' proximity to the TEA letters based on letter and bigram frequency.
Vowel Sandwich layout[edit | edit source]
There are two types of letters: vowels and consonants. Words are spelled with vowels sandwiched between consonants. One can extend this metaphor into a real sandwich by putting the vowels in a horizontal row and the consonants above and below the vowels.
WHTARKX layout[edit | edit source]
Letters in WHTARKX are placed in an intuitive grid. The space key is twice as big as other keys to increase the number of its adjacent letters.
TEAION layout[edit | edit source]
The space is double wide surrounded by the most common letters TEAION.
Vowel Ring layout[edit | edit source]
The vowels are placed together in a tight ring near the center.
HexaLiteral layout[edit | edit source]
Keys in Hexaliteral layout are arranged like hexagons to reduce the distance between keys. The space is in the center, then the most common letters surround it.
Hex Cluster layout[edit | edit source]
Hexcluster is similar to Hexaliteral, except that the letters surrounding the space key are based on most common bigrams with the space character. This facilitates swiping and twyping for easily connecting adjacent letters without lifting the finger.
Ragnorak layout[edit | edit source]
Ragnorak layout is best used for typing with two thumbs. Each half of the layout has a cluster of letters. The left half are all consonants, while the right half contains all the vowels and the remaining consonants. Near the middle of each cluster is the space to help finish words.
