A reaction to Colemak's overemphasis on the home row, which causes strain from too much lateral motion. Workman instead focuses on the keys easiest to reach for the human hand.
SpecsUpdate
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Pros
Pro Less lateral motion than Colemak
Colemak's focus on the home row is flawed. Due to differing finger lengths and the natural range of human hand motion, the center columns (even on the home row) take more effort to reach than the top row with the longer middle fingers. Workman takes this into account.
Pro Common English bigrams are optimized
This is an emphasis shared with Colemak, but Workman focuses on the easiest keys instead of the home row.
Pro Finger travel is very low overall
This is good for preventing RSI.
Pro Very comfortable for Vim
Works so well out of the box that I can only think the creator thought about it beforehand.
Pro Good for programming
Common characters {} [] <> () / ' " are easily accessible by the right hand on the right of the keyboard.
Combinations ( { + } for example) are placed side by side on the keyboard which is useful as well.
Pro Works on any keyboard, but additional benefits from Matrix style keyboards
Someone mentioned a CON because it was designed for Matrix style keyboards, but it was designed on a standard keyboard. However, matrix style keyboards adds additional benefits on top of this key layout. For those who don't know matrix keyboards are those where the key rows are not offset, but are directly above one another.
Pro Ctrl- AZXCV shortcuts are still accessible with one hand
AZX are in the QWERTY positions, and CV have only shifted one key right. This lets you use the mouse with the right hand and the shortcuts with the left, unlike Dvorak.
Pro Mac version has Dead Keys version
The macOS version of Workman has the comma (,) key as a dead key, which allows you to access harder keys on a secondary layer.
Pro Most symbols and shortcuts are the same as QWERTY
Cons
Con Certain Keybindings don't work in certain applications
In certain apps (like kitty terminal emulator), keyboard shortcuts like Control+C do not work.
Con Designed to be used on a matrix style keyboard
This keyboard layout wan't designed to be used on a normal keyboard.