A highly ergonomic English/ German keyboard layout for standard ISO keyboards or 3x6 columnar staggered keyboards. It has really good analyzer stats, but gives an even better typing feel :-) Unlike many modern layouts optimized primarily for English, EnDeu maintains consistent ergonomic performance across both English and German. It is also a really good option to be adapted for other European languages such as Dutch, French and Spanish and probably even more.
This layout is an alternative to anymak:END. It is based on the same proven principles. The difference to anymak:END are as follows:
The default shift key position from a standard keyboard is used and not changed.This allows to use more keys and has two benefits and two disadvantages
Advantages over anymak:END
- Due that change some analyzer statistics numbers, such as same-finger-bigrams have been improved.
- The layout includes all German diacritics on the base layer, instead of requiring to access them on a separate layer. That is the much more important difference I think.
Disadvantages over anymak:END
- The shift key is left in the default position, which is not easy to reach, but requires an unergonomic stretch of the pinky — or moving the floating hand. In contrast anymak:END does not use the ISO-shift key positions at all and avoids this uncomfortable position. You can however use one-shot shift with EnDeu as well. Note that EnDeu requires an ISO-keyboard and cannot be adapted in a meaningful way to an ANSI keyboard. But if you mainly use ANSI-keyboards you likely will have English as your main language and anymak:END is the suggested layout in that case.
- anymak:END has a one-shot layer key available on the left and right hand. For EnDeu the right layer key is used for the character 'ß', so it does not allow to place the one-shot layer key there any longer. Swiss people could recover that position although :-). Another option when using an ISO keyboard is to put the less frequent used character 'ß' on the B-key position from QWERTY or the #-key position in QWERTZ, freeing up the key again to be used as a one-shot layer switch.
If you prefer anymak:END or EnDeu is a matter of preference. Both layouts will feel great, with somewhat different strong sides and weaker sides. But mostly the layouts are very similar (see details below). The real world difference is the placement of the Shift keys and the umlauts. EnDeu can (and should) be perfectly complemented by realizing extra symbol and navigation and shortcut layers. See the Spacemak ideas.
The layout can be used directly on an ISO-keyboard. The finger position is symmetrical for the left and right hand. The right hand is as usual and the left hand like follows: 'qhk' is the pinky-row, '.aä' the row of the ring finger and so on. See also the finger columns on a columnar staggered keyboard below. For both keyboard types the handpositions stay exactly the same and are symmetrical for the left and right hand.
This is how the layout looks on a a columnar staggered split keyboard. Here shown with J and ß being swapped. This is a minor variation of the layout shown above. Neither version is better, but it is your choice which you prefer.
The screenshots with keyboard statistics below are taken from the analyzer from Cyanophage and give a first impression how the layout fares. The EnDeu layout scores very well in regards to statistics. But note that the analyzers do not fully describe the typing experience. For example the suggested layout could slightly be tweaked to get a tiny bit better SFBs (same-finger-bigrams) by swapping m-w, but I deliberately have chosen the current position, because I find it slightly easier to type that way. You can swap those two characters if you prefer. Try typing 'will', 'much', 'poland' and 'wc' with both variants and choose according to your preference or if you prefer the somewhat more frequent 'm' or the slightly less frequent 'w' on the stronger middle finger.
Also note that the keyboard analyzer sometimes do not allow to describe the layout in question fully. In the case of anymak:END most analyzers do not take into account that the shift and symbol layer keys are easy to reach. If they would, the numeric values for anymak:END would be even better. Also the usage of one-shot layer keys is relevant practical advantage -- typically not shown by analyzers. On the other side the extra effort to access the umlauts on the symbol layer is also not considered. That would possibly slightly increase the effort metrics.
Comparison to Graphite — a modern layout alternative
To give you an idea why it can be interesting to consider EnDeu, let's compare it against Graphite and Gallium. These two are modern layouts which are increasingly used — for good reasons, because they are very balanced layouts resulting in a typing experience many people enjoy. The EnDeu layout also tries to achieve a great balance between all the parameters a keyboard layout is optimized for. In comparison to Graphite it puts less focus on same-finger-bigrams, but still trying to keep those pretty low. The remaing same-finger-bigrams on EnDeu are mostly on the strong index and middle finger — from the top-row back to the home-row. That makes the same-finger-bigrams still relative comfortable to type. On keyboards with u-shaped keycaps such as MCC for Choc switches, you can even "rake" the finger from one row to the other.
Another difference is that high frequency keys are put on the stronger index and middle finger as far as possible. That is one reason that the common letter 'e' is on the middle finger instead the weaker ring finger it is on Graphite/ Gallium. Both Graphite/ Gallium and EnDeu largely avoid awkward finger motions, such as scissors, re-directs, SFBs and large stretches. The performance in regards to those bad keyboard layout characteristics are roughly in the same range for the three layouts.
One of the most important characterists for a layout to not cause discomfort are a high amount of hand alternations — not forcing you to type long sequences just with one hand. Again, the three layouts are very close in that regard.
But EnDeu has two advantages over many other layouts. For a high-alternation layout it has still a relatively high amount of inward-rolls. This is something you can likely feel and enjoy during your typing. For English Graphite has 21.7 % inward rolls. That is comparable to many other modern layouts not using a thumb-character key. EnDeu in contrast has 27.7 % inward-rolls. That is on the high side for that class of layouts for a standard keyboard.
The second unique and rare characteristic for a keyboard layout is that EnDeu is not only optimized for English, but has about the same performance — means comfortable typing feel — for several European languages.
Try out and trust your feelings
Using keyboard layout analyzers to aid in the development or first judgement of a layout is very useful and highly recommended. But be aware that after you have chosen two or three candidates it is best to try out the layouts with a few handfull words. The analyzers will not give you the full picture alone. Using a website to try out different layouts is very valuable and will help you to find the layout which fits best to your use case, hand size and keyboard type.
Diacritics are added here for comparison to evaluate German. The original Graphite does not offer diacritics, but the statistics are not changed that much by the umlauts -- regardless if the umlaut placement has been optimized (not the case here). Still for real-world typing the umlauts are relevant to place wisely, because regardless of the low frequency you will get quickly annoyed when they are in hard to reach places and do not fit into the typing flow.
https://cyanophage.github.io/playground.html?layout=bldwz%27fouj%C3%B6nrtsgyhaei%2Cqxmcvkp.%C3%BC%C3%A4%C3%9F%5E&mode=ergo&lan=german&thumb=l
Note that Cyanophage's analyzer does not allow to exactly display how anymak:END is setup (with one-shot shift and layers keys and the diacritics on the extra layer). The below screenshot is therefore just an approximation, where the umlauts are placed on the base-layer. Because of the low frequency of the umlauts the statistic values will not differ too much from the real layout, but they would be a little bit better if the analyzer would take into account the real umlaut key positions.
https://cyanophage.github.io/playground.html?layout=qkouyvdclfjhaei%2Cgtrns%C3%9F%C3%B6z%27.xbpmw%C3%A4%3D%C3%BC&mode=ergo&lan=german&thumb=l
As a bonus here the stats for some other languages, where you can see that a slightly adopted EnDeu-layout works also great for Dutch, French or Spanish for example. The layouts below are not ready-made for these languages. Diacritics need to be added as needed.
Note that the relative high number of same-finger-bigrams are on the strong index and middle finger (UI and OE). I finde these are actually comfortable to type and should not keep you from trying the layout. :-)
For Dutch and English this Gallium variant is also very interesting. That and the above layout have somewhat different strengths, but both will work good for English and Dutch. The Gallium variant possibly a bit better for Dutch, but still good for English. And EnNed vice versa a bit better for English, but still good for Dutch.
https://cyanophage.github.io/playground.html?layout=qxouyvdclfjhaei.gtsrn%C3%A0k%C3%A7%C3%A8%C3%A9%2Cbpmwz%27%5E&mode=ergo&lan=french&thumb=l
If you want a French optimized keyboard layout as the main language and English as a second language, take a look at Optimot. Another option can be the layout shown here. It is really good for English and French at the same time. This layout shown here has to be seen as a draft version. Because I do not use French-English myself as the main language combination I have not done the fine-tuning / testing. But after checking and possibly optimizing the diacritics and minor changes I guess this layout could be an excellent option and likely surpasing the already good Optimot layout -- especially for English. In case you would like to create a final version of that layout and would need some help or input you can comment here.
