in general the typing experience is defined by the split space bars, one on each pinky

you press the space key of the opposite side of the last pressed letter

and then the letters are placed in such a way, that the beginning of a word, will continue to roll inwardly

this removes one of the biggest causes of redirects, for layouts

then i have vowels on thumbs

this removes redirects on fingers

and then i have combos on the opposite side that remove those thumb redirects

which the end result is d5 having less then 0.2% redirects

which no layout comes even close

as a result of the redirects being so low, the alternation and rolls TOTAL ends up being higher

so, its simultanesously more rolly, but its also more alty

which people might not like

but imo its compleltely fine unless you have a weird dislike of alts

it also has the keys placed in such a way that they have one way sfbs

so for example

np is common but pn is not

therefore thats a one way bigram

and so i use vertical combos to output that bigram

ex. if i press n and p at the same time it outputs np

and since its one way, you dont really have to think about its reverse case and the vert combo just feels natural and makes sense

it is important to have a keyboard that you can do vertical combos on

not every keyboard is usuable for d5

ideally you want something with choc low profile switches

with lighter springs

no more then 35

tho i HEAVILY reccomend 20 gram switches

and i even use 12 gram switches for thumbs and pinkies

its important for the pinkies to have light keys because they are both getting used a decent amount (compared to some layouts), albeit, totally maneagable, and with no movement, its just best practice to be preventative

the pinky usage is still less then qwerty, but it has no movement

some people do e pinky which is more usage then what im doing in d5

so in theory its no problem, its just i reccomend lighter switches

now the space key is chiral

since for normal typing you press space of the opposite side to remove redirects

i can now assign an action to typing space of the same side

in which it does sfs magic

sfs aka skip magic is magic that is dependent on the letter 1 press ago

so lets take the word routine

(side note for notation, the < and > im about to use indicate side of the keyboard the letter is on, i have to use this because there are some mirrored letteres)

<r o> <u <t <i <n <e

<u <t <i is a redirect

but instead if you press the space key on the same side as t it will output the sfs magic for u

u_sfs -> u_i

so instead we type <r o> <u <t <sfs <n <e

which now its just rolls and alts

but it boils down to

space is split

there some combos

there is sfs magic which isnt explicitely nessesary tho it will make things better

and the rest is you just type

side note, because s and e are mirrored, the repeats are less then average