MTGAP

Having tried different keyboard layouts lately, namely

• QWERTY,
• Colemak,
• Dvorak,
• Colemak-DH,

I kept looking for alternatives and reading in a couple of forums.

One layout that managed to do well, or rather, stand out, in all the different keyboard layout analyzers I tried is the latest version of MTGAP's layout. I am currently using the version that optimizes the 30 main keys on a standard (ISO or ANSI) keyboard, and I'm very impressed. It is a roll-heavy layout with a good amount of alternation and feels extremely smooth overall.

I am, however, not its creator (whose nickname happens to be MTGAP).

Since I am jumping between operating systems a lot, I implemented the 30-key version of MTGAP for the most common ones.

Nowadays, I'm mainly typing on ergo split keyboards which use the Quantum Mechanical Keyboard (QMK) firmware. This way, I can program the layout "into" the keyboard which enables me to use the layout everywhere without having to install software first (but I have to carry the keyboard with me, of course :D).

Installation

QMK

In case you're interested, check out the QMK configuration that is used across all my keyboards.

Linux

Using xkbcomp

With xkbcomp it's easy to specify a "delta" to an existing layout and immediately use it like this:

xkbcomp ./xkb/mtgap.xkb $DISPLAY

So far I've only built the 30-key version of MTGAP with some German umlauts and CAPS as backspace, but it should be straightforward to adapt the file to your needs.

Manual installation

If you use X, do

sudo cp xkb/mtgap_30 /usr/share/X11/xkb/symbols/

To make the layout visible to GNOME, add the contents of xkb/evdev_section.xml to

/usr/share/X11/xkb/rules/evdev.xml

(But be aware that system updates can overwrite evdev.xml. Then you have to manually insert the section again.)

The linux version contains the following variants:

• basic
• german (basic plus German umlauts, ß, and ẞ)
• caps_bksp (CAPS as backspace)
• german_caps_bksp (german with CAPS as backspace)

I have gotten it to work on Wayland as well, but I don't specifically remember what I did to get there. IIRC it was similar to the above plus basically telling Wayland to be xkb compatible.

macOS

The macOS version of MTGAP was created with Ukelele, which can also be used to install the layout. On macOS, I also included the fully optimized variant of MTGAP for an ANSI keyboard, but do not personally use it.

Windows

The layout was created using the ancient Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator. It is able to create an installer/uninstaller executable from the *.klc files inside the win directory (30-key and fully optimized versions).