When comparing Norman vs qwpr, the Slant community recommends Norman for most people. In the question“What are the best keyboard layouts for programming?” Norman is ranked 8th while qwpr is ranked 13th. The most important reason people chose Norman is:
Norman keeps 22/26 letters in their original QWERTY finger, making the transition easier, and, according to many tests, does so without much loss in ergonomics.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Uses the same fingers as QWERTY for most letters
Norman keeps 22/26 letters in their original QWERTY finger, making the transition easier, and, according to many tests, does so without much loss in ergonomics.
Pro Keeps many common QWERTY shortcuts intact
Common shortcuts, such as ctrl + z, ctrl + x, etc., are kept in their original positions without much loss in ergonomics, making the transition easier.
Pro Feels fast and comfy
Pro Focuses on the keys easiest to reach for the human hand
Like Workman, Norman takes human anatomy into account.
Pro Designed using normal keyboards in mind
Unlike keyboard layouts such as workman that are desgined to be used by matrix keyboards, norman is made to be used by a standard keyboard.
Pro Favours the right hand
Unlike other layouts, such as workman, norman favours the right hand due to it usually being stronger than the left.
Pro Good for vim users
Qwpr is pretty close to QWERTY, and even the HJKL keys are in the same left-to-right order (though on different rows). Alternatively, the AltGr plane also has arrow keys in a sensible position under the right hand.
Pro Common shortcuts don't move
A, Z, X, C, and V are in the same positions as QWERTY and Colemak.
Pro As easy as Dvorak
It's 32% easier than QWERTY by the Carpalx metric, which is slightly better than Dvorak's 30%. This is probably within Carpalx's margin of error though.
Pro Alternate plane with CapsLock key
CapsLock is pretty useless for most people, but qwpr layout uses it to shift to another plane with easy access to punctuation and arrow keys. This is especially useful for programmers.
Pro Minimal retraining from QWERTY
11 keys move, but except for P and E, they don't change fingers.
Cons
Con Bad on SFBs
Lots of same finger bigrams (when 2 keys are hit simultaneously by one finger like the qwerty "ed".
Con A very small user base and community
Con Designed for right handed use
The Norman was designed with right handed use in mind, making it a less attractive choice for left handed users. However, tests done by some users (can be found in the comments) suggests that the Norman layout might be balanced.
Con Scores worse in ergonomics using the Carpalx test
Norman, although scoring better in travel distance, generally scores worse in the Carpalx test than layouts such as Colemak. See the source here.
Con Puts E on the pinky
'E' is the most used English letter by far, at almost 13%. That's almost as much as the spacebar. It needs to be on a strong finger. The pinky is the weakest finger and on the right side it is already overtaxed from Ctrl, Shift, and Enter.
Con P and E change fingers from QWERTY
Which makes it harder than necessary to learn from QWERTY. (And makes no sense. 'E' was arguably better in its QWERTY position on a strong finger.) This is due to using the flawed Carpalx effort model.