When comparing Minimak 4-key vs Carpalx QGMLWY, the Slant community recommends Carpalx QGMLWY for most people. In the question“What are the best keyboard layouts for programming?” Carpalx QGMLWY is ranked 15th while Minimak 4-key is ranked 23rd. The most important reason people chose Carpalx QGMLWY is:
Keeps the ZXCV key in the same place as the very common QWERTY keyboard layout. More familiar than even than QGMLWB.
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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 Easier to learn than QGMLWB
Keeps the ZXCV key in the same place as the very common QWERTY keyboard layout. More familiar than even than QGMLWB.
Pro The layout is basically good for most Latin languages
As vowels and consonants are mostly divided between 2 hands and most words in Latin languages are made of 2-letter (consonant+vowel) syllables, the layout keeps it efficiency not only in English, for which it was primarily created, but in other languages too.
Pro It takes much less effort to type than classical layout
The layout effectively combines not only changing hands methods, and rolling fingers as well, that makes typing a real pleasure.
Pro About the same score on the carplax test as the QGMLWB variant
See the source here.
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 Very unpopular
Even rich on keyboard layouts variety Linux distros like Deepin, offering most of existing layouts, doesn't have this one. The situation on Android is not better, moreover if somebody get used to Swift-like keyboards, that do not have this layout, that person will be forced to have a second (e.g. qwerty) layout in mind.
Con Not always worth trying
The layout is great only if somebody uses it daily and a lot, like journalists, bloggers, writers do. In this case inconvenience to install the layout is worth use it. If you primarily use your phone/tablet to write some comments in Internet and other tiny writing tasks having such an unpopular layout on just your PC/laptop could be not justified.