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Maltron Letter Layout vs Colemak Mod-DH

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When comparing Maltron Letter Layout vs Colemak Mod-DH, the Slant community recommends Colemak Mod-DH for most people. In the question“What are the best keyboard layouts for programming?” Colemak Mod-DH is ranked 3rd while Maltron Letter Layout is ranked 14th. The most important reason people chose Colemak Mod-DH is:

Some people find moving D and H to the bottom row much more comfortable (especially with flat keyboards). Curved keyboards like the Kinesis Advantage also help with lateral motion. Regular Colemak on these keyboards might be the ideal solution since then you help resolve some of the cons of regular Colemak without adding on the ones from Mod DH.

Specs

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Bottom Row Key Freq.13.5%

Consecutive Same-Hand Keystrokes (L/R)40.2%/59.8%

Home Row Key Freq.56.0%

Left Index Finger Travel34.3%

Left Index Finger Usage16.8%

Left Little Finger Travel0.9%

Left Little Finger Usage6.4%

Left Middle Finger Travel14.5%

Left Middle Finger Usage10.1%

Left Ring Finger Travel5.1%

Left Ring Finger Usage7.8%

Right Index Finger Travel31.4%

Right Index Finger Usage16.2%

Right Little Finger Travel0.7%

Right Little Finger Usage6.2%

Right Middle Finger Travel7.8%

Right Middle Finger Usage14.0%

Right Ring Finger Travel5.4%

Right Ring Finger Usage7.4%

Spacebar Row Key Freq.15.3%

Thumb Usage15.3%

Top Row Key Freq.15.2%

Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking

Common Questions

What are the best keyboard layouts for programming?

Maltron Letter Layout

Colemak Mod-DH

Pros

Pro
Punctuation is also optimized

The comma and period are more frequent than KVJZXQ.

Pro
E on the thumb

E is the most used English letter by far at almost 13%.

Pro
Highly optimized for frequency of use

This includes di- and tri-graphs, as well as the individual letter frequency.

Pro
Much less lateral hand movement compared with regular Colemak

Pro
Easy to learn from Colemak

No keys change fingers from Colemak (with the possible exception of Z , which is rarely used, in one variant).

Pro
'HE' easier to type compared with regular Colemak

Pro
Letter G goes back to its original QWERTY position

This puts ING all on the middle row. Regular Colemak has G in the top row.

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Cons

Con
Requires a physical keyboard

The Maltron layout requires an expensive physical Maltron keyboard. Most layout options are a simple change in software, to remap existing keys. (Touch typists mostly don't look at the labels anyway.) But there's no way to add the required thumb keys for this layout in software.

Con
Regular Colemak is more standard

Mac and Linux have regular Colemak keyboard options. This isn't an issue if your keyboard is programmable through QMK, VIA, etc.

Con
H, M, V, B change from original QWERTY position

Regular Colemak has these in their original QWERTY position. The learning curve increases somewhat in Mod-DH.

Con
Breaks up ZXCV slightly

Breaks up ZXCV (moves V over one space). Could cause copy paste confusion if also using other layouts like QWERTY. For ANSI layouts the Z is also moved to a new position.

Con
No Innate Layout Configuration In Keybr

Keybr supports Standard Colemak but in order to adjust to DH Mod you must use an extension like tampermonkey and run a Script like this one and adjust to fit whichever variant.