When comparing Minimak 4-key vs Maltron Letter Layout, the Slant community recommends Maltron Letter Layout for most people. In the question“What are the best keyboard layouts for programming?” Maltron Letter Layout is ranked 14th while Minimak 4-key is ranked 23rd. The most important reason people chose Maltron Letter Layout is:
The comma and period are more frequent than KVJZXQ.
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Pros
Pro One of the easiest to learn from QWERTY
Only 4 keys have moved from their QWERTY positions, hence the name. All the advantages of QWERTY (except those 4 keys) still apply.
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.
Cons
Con The "HE" bigram is awkward
The H and E keys are in the same position as Colemak, so they both have the same-hand lateral motion problem for the second-most common English bigram "HE".
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.