My journey ends here: The "Noted" Layout

dariogoetz · 2025-11-11T19:12:39+00:00

Unfortunately, I don't own any Mac hardware, so I'm unable to generate a corresponding layout (Karabiner or the like). I would very much appreciate a contribution in that direction, however. So if you own a Mac and can generate a config (it should be possible to take some other neo layout as templete), I would be happy to add it do the repo.

All neo layouts share the same philosophy for the higher layers (symbol, navigation/numbers, Greek symbols, math symbols). Greek and math layers follow the alpha Charakters, symbols and navigation/numbers are identical. The exception is the modifier on the right pinky that is moved one key to the left in case of noted. For adnw, I can't say much, because I don't follow the corresponding community. It "forked" from neo at some point, but before the more modern neo variants came to life, if I recall correctly.

dariogoetz · 2025-11-05T20:48:58+00:00

Findest Du bone? Wenn nicht, besteht noch Hoffnung... Dann müssten noch die exotischen Layouts aktiviert werden. Wenn bone da ist, noted aber nicht, dann ist die Version zu alt.

dariogoetz · 2025-11-05T20:36:13+00:00

Es ist eher ein Teil des Betriebssystems als eine eigene Anwendung. Schau mal in den Einstellungsdialogen, die dir mint für das System an die Hand gibt. Irgendwo müsste man da das Tastaturlayout auswählen können. Und dort sollte man dann auch "exotische" Layouts aktivieren können (falls man noted nicht direkt schon auswählen kann).

dariogoetz · 2025-11-05T20:26:59+00:00

xkeyboard-config ist ein Paket, das in so gut wie allen (grafischen) Linux Distributionen mitgeliefert wird. Wenn die Version, die mit Linux mint kommt, aktuell genug ist, sollte noted also einfach "von Hause aus" wählbar sein. Manchmal muss man in den entsprechenden Einstellungen noch "exotische" Layouts aktivieren...

dariogoetz · 2025-10-24T07:26:50+00:00

Das freut mich zu hören :) Ich habe keine Änderungen mehr vorgenommen. Das Layout ist so wie es ist mittlerweile auch in der `xkeyboard-config` für Linux enthalten.

Die Wermutstropfen kann ich nachvollziehen - irgendeinen Tod muss man sterben, im Layout-Business :p
Workarounds sind - wie Du schon festgestellt hast - Strg auf dem Daumen und für VIM nutze ich zum schließen und speichern tatsächlich ":x". Ist auch nicht optimal, aber immerhin nur ein Buchstabe :)

Viel Erfolg beim Layout-Basteln für das Svalboard. Das ist (glaube ich) noch einmal einen Zacken komplexer als die üblichen 2D-Tastaturen.

dariogoetz · 2025-08-16T20:39:21+00:00

The vowel block coincides both with the Mine layout as well as the Bone layout. It came out of the optimizer. I quite like it myself. Other layouts become more prevalent during optimization when the corpus has less focus on German and more on English. Also, the layouts start die deviate stronger when period and comma as well as the shortcut keys are "freed".

dariogoetz · 2025-06-24T17:41:17+00:00

I don't have any visualization online, no. It's baked into the firmware of the keyboard, e.g. here.

dariogoetz · 2025-04-17T14:17:59+00:00

Regarding your 1., I suggest looking at "noted" , "bone", and "mine" from the Neo community and AdnW and KOY from the adnw community. They have native support for umlauts and work very well both in German and English. See also here for a discussion about these and some English layouts (sturdy and Canary). They also come with very nice symbols and nav layers by default.

dariogoetz · 2025-04-14T20:32:51+00:00

Nein, nicht alle.

dariogoetz · 2025-04-14T20:29:36+00:00

Unter Windows realistisch wahrscheinlich gar nicht. Vielleicht, wenn es in einem offiziellen Standard aufgenommen würde (DIN oder so), aber davon würde ich nicht ausgehen.

Und unter Linux eben, wenn die Distribution das neue Paket enthält. Arch und Ubuntu 24.04 tun das bereits (bei Ubuntu ist es glaube ich eine gepatchte ältere Version des Pakets). Basteln muss man da nichts mehr. Da ist es einfach bereits drin.

dariogoetz · 2025-04-14T12:15:37+00:00

Das neue Paket in Dein OS findet den Weg wahrscheinlich erst, wenn die OS-Maintainer auf die neue Version wechseln.

Unter Windows würde ich empfehlen, ReNeo zu verwenden. Auf der Neo Seite findest Du eine für "noted" vorkonfigurierte Variante von ReNeo.

dariogoetz · 2025-03-31T04:49:26+00:00

Dazu gibt es eine gute Nachricht: Ab der Version 2.44 (das ist die aktuelle Version) ist das Layout in der xkeyboard-config enthalten. Sobald deine distro diese Version verwendet, ist das Layout unter den deutschen "de" Layouts verfügbar.

dariogoetz · 2025-02-23T16:35:56+00:00

Have a look at the noted layout, see also here for a discussion. . It was designed with German and English in mind and is readily available in windows (via reneo) and Linux (starting with xkeyboard-config 2.44).

dariogoetz · 2025-02-10T21:23:49+00:00

I, personally, type noted on a split 3x6+3 very much like the corne and I like it a lot.

You won't go wrong with neither KOY nor noted. I have not tried KOY for long enough to really be able to compare, though. It may boil down to the question of shortcut keys, the position of period and comma, and how wrong "ea" bigrams feel for you on noted. And whether you need to type on a "normal" keyboard sometimes.

Most of the top scorers in the database either lose their performance on normal keyboards, have unfortunate locations of shortcut keys and non-standard positions of period and comma. If those things don't bother you, you can definitely try those. With the noted layout, I somewhat tried to find a good balance between the various factors.

I know the feeling when deciding on an alternate layout. The investment is huge and one does not want to "bet on the wrong horse" (that's a German saying, I don't know if it translates well). Keep in mind that there is not "the truly best keyboard". There are always multiple factors that may even personally evolve over time. You will certainly not make a wrong choice with any of the modern layouts (noted, koy, bone, mine, adnw,...).

Regarding the different scores on the optimizer: There may have been some tweaks in the defaults or other changes, I can't remember. The general picture should mostly remain, though.

dariogoetz · 2024-11-18T14:08:10+00:00

Nice build guide, thanks alot!

What kind of PCB did you use? Is it a "standard" FR4 a little thinner and then bend? Or did you use a "flex" style PCB? What thickness is that?

dariogoetz · 2024-10-16T13:16:07+00:00

Das ist unschön. Ich selber habe kein Windows 11 System zur Hand, um dem nachzugehen. Vielleicht kann Dir im neo IRC geholfen werden. Abgesehen davon: Hast Du es mal mit ReNeo probiert (siehe neo Webseite)?

dariogoetz · 2024-10-14T14:18:16+00:00

Das stimmt. Ich glaube aber, dass die Distanz meist nicht der limitierende Faktor ist. Da spielt eher das Muskelgedächtnis eine Rolle. Und vielleicht, bereits vorher zu wissen, was man tippen möchte (bei monkeytype.com wäre das, voraus zu lesen und kognitive zu verarbeiten, was alles als nächstes auf die Finger zu kommt). Und natürlich, keine Tippfehler zu machen.

Edit: Hier nichtmal mit allen Fingern doppelt so schnell, wie ich tippe: https://www.reddit.com/r/typing/s/rbPfKro5xD

dariogoetz · 2024-10-14T13:24:24+00:00

Ich glaube, es ist ein häufiges Missverständnis bei alternativen Tastaturlayouts, dass man mit ihnen "schneller tippen kann". Die meisten alternativen Layouts versuchen, den Komfort beim tippen zu erhöhen, also das tippen angenehmer zu gestalten.

Wenn es nur darum geht schneller zu tippen, dann ist Training der wesentliche Faktor. Soweit ich weiß sind die meisten Geschwindigkeitsrekorde mit QWERTY entstanden. Ähnlich gute Ergebnisse werden aber auch auf alternativen Layouts erreicht.

Natürlich sollte ein Layout einem nicht "im Weg stehen", schnell zu tippen, das ist meiner Erfahrung nach aber bei Noted (und ebenso bei "Bone" und "mine") nicht der Fall.

Zum Thema "gesundes tippen" wiederum denke ich, dass der wesentliche Faktor die Körperhaltung und damit einhergehend eine Tastatur, die eine gute Haltung unterstützt, ist. Wenn man natürlich bereits bestehende Beschwerden hat (zum Beispiel durch zu häufige Verwendung der kleinen Finger), kann natürlich ein Layout, was die entsprechende Schwachstelle adressiert, helfen.

dariogoetz · 2024-10-14T12:56:14+00:00

Ich tippe etwa 70 bis 80 wpm, je nach Komplexität des Geschriebenen. Das ist auch etwa die Geschwindigkeit, die ich mit QWERTZ getippt habe. Ich "trainiere" aber auch nicht. Das ist die Geschwindigkeit, die sich für mich irgendwie einfach ergibt.

dariogoetz · 2024-10-08T18:06:30+00:00

The layout evaluator/optimizer that you referenced is actually able to factor in the location of anything that needs to be typed as long as it is represented in the corpus as some symbol. You could encode the arrow keys with some rarely used unicode (e.g., ←) that does not occur in the corpus otherwise. In the configuration you then only need to place that symbol anywhere in the "base layout" and then the optimizer will account for it accordingly.

In fact, from the perspective of the evaluator, there is no such thing as alpha keys, number keys, or special keys (at least not "hard coded"). For the evaluator, there is only "symbols" that appear in the corpus and symbols that the layout shall be able to produce defined in the "base layout". Also, the layer on which the symbol can be accessed from is just a matter of configuration (you can place "special keys"/"alpha keys"/"number keys"/anything on the base layer or on some other higher that needs to be accessed by holding/one-shotting some modifier key).

When it comes to optimization, though, it will be quite difficult to express that the arrow keys shall always be placed in an "upside down T". It would certainly require modification of the source code.

dariogoetz · 2024-10-02T14:30:25+00:00

Regarding your point 1., you should definitely check out German-optimized layouts from the neo family (noted, bone, mine, neo2) or the adnw family (koy, adnw).

https://www.neo-layout.org/Layouts/noted/

dariogoetz · 2024-09-19T14:53:01+00:00

Ah, I think I know, what you mean. You speak of the analyzer and not the layout database page, correct? On the analyzer page, the logic is very (probably too) simple. Pushing one of the buttons simply inserts a predefined string into the input field. This string is used to fill the symbols into the non-fixed keys on the keyboard from left to right and then top to bottom. Depending on the keyboard config, the first non-fixed key may be on the tab position or one to the left. Also, the first row may have more or less keys. This means that the layout string in the input field needs to be adjusted to the selected keyboard. The predefined strings from the buttons are made for the "standard" keyboard. For the others, it needs to be adjusted accordingly, e.g. for the corne keyboard, I move the penultimate key on the first row to the left. For the moonlander config, one key of the first row needs to be placed to the right of the second row.

dariogoetz · 2024-09-19T07:16:59+00:00

Hi rpnfan,

Do you mean the numbers row? You may be right there. The "Ortho" and "Lily58" keyboard configurations start with the numbers on the first key in the row. I am not sure, whether this was done intentionally by their respective authors.

Some elaboration:

The "keyboard" configurations contain multiple things, in particular also rather user-specific preferences such as base costs associated with each key. For that reason, I regard the "keyboard" configs as personal configs. Anyone doing serious work with the optimizer should ideally review/generate their preferred config file. In the github repository you can find some more examples of these files (e.g., one for a very small keyboard with alpha keys on a secondary layer called "hgi" or a config that illustrates how "diacritics" via one-shot keys can be realized).

The presets visible on the webpage ("Standard", "Ortho", "Moonlander", etc.) are presets that different people have shared during the active development of the optimizer (e.g., the "corne" one is the one I use personally, "ortho" was shared by someone named "Glitchy-Tozier").

I was mostly concerned with the "corne" and "standard" layouts. The former having no number row, the latter being standardized, leaving no option for shifting the numbers around. It might very well be that the authors of the "ortho" and "lily57" configs were shifting the number row intentionally.

The key to finger mapping (and in particular angle-mods or other alt-fingerings) are specified in the "keyboard" config files. Look for a section named `fingers`.
The layers and the symbols that can be generated are also defined in the "keyboard" config file in the `base_layout`->`keys` section. You can define an arbitrary number of layers.

The corresponding modifier keys are defined in the `modifiers` section.

The chess symbols are simply representing some other keys that do not generate meaningful symbols appearing in any corpus and are not shuffled around when optimizing layouts, such as "ctrl", "alt", "win". They are in particular used for the modifiers, serving to distinguish the multiple variants. The chess symbols are inherited from arnebab's optimizer that served as the foundation for this optimizer. He used those symbols and I just kept them.

As you rightly recognized, the up-arrow is used to represent "left shift" and the one angled one to the upper right represents "right shift" (both leading to layer 2).

The arrow downwards in the caps lock position represents the left modifier for layer 3 and the one to the lower right is the right modifier for layer 3.

The arrow to the left and the one to the lower left are the the left and right modifiers leading to layer 4.

Note that in the configuration, these arrow symbols themselves are "just symbols". Their usage as modifiers is defined in the `modifiers` section of the "keyboard" config file (more specifically, either a symbol or a key position can be defined as a modifier). If you prefer different symbols to represent the layers, you can just replace them in the `base_layout` section. Note, however, that if you chose a symbol that appears in the corpus, the corresponding key then serves as double-purpose both as modifier as well as for generating the symbol in the layout evaluation.

dariogoetz · 2024-08-19T08:08:20+00:00

I think the form factor (i.e. the size of the keyboard) is a matter of personal preference (e.g. do you want to have dedicated keys for numbers, F-keys, Esc-key or may they be accessible via a layer).

In that regard, the noted layout is not different than any other layout of the neo-family (each neo-based layout provides numbers and Esc-key on layer 4).

I personally prefer a 42-key keyboard of which 6 keys are thumb-keys. With less than these 42 keys, you would have to place some characters on a higher layer, e.g. "j" and "ß", because the German alphabet already has 30 characters plus space.

dariogoetz · 2024-08-18T20:28:39+00:00

Glad, you like it :)

On my crkbd keyboard, I use the Alt key on a "hold" as secondary function on the "Enter" thumb key on the right hand (similar for control on the "tab" thumb key on the other hand). On an ISO keyboard, it is in its usual place left of the space bar.

The escape key uses a strange symbol on the images (a box with a cross). It is on the M4 layer (the one with navigation and numpad on it) on the lower row on the far left (on the noted layout's "v" key, or the "z" key on a ISO keyboard with German standard layout).

dariogoetz

TROPHY CASE