Oh man I really like that THE-1 document! Did the author ever post their full Model01 layout?
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I like it! I might play with that in due course, but am having enough trouble with the QMK combos for now!
Sadly I thank the âEâ + âspaceâ = âEnterâ malarky will have to be binned, it is too easy to trigger inadvertently. In the meantime I disabled the âtap-danceâ which allowed â,â and â.â to produce â?â and â!â respectively as I could not figure if that were messing up âtapping termsâ for the combos - I could not notice any difference when changing them - admittedly at random. The really frustrating thing is that I had layer-tap under both big thumb keys previously and was not getting accidental triggering of stuff to anything like the same extent previously. I even had it so holding âEâ and tapping âspaceâ outputs âenterâ, doing the opposite acted as âescapeâ, so am at a loss as to why combos on this pair is proving such a fiasco. The most common error previously was typing the pair âedâ resulting in '', which was bad enough.
The important thing is you have something that works for you. In addition to my previous reservations, I suggest your scheme for the palm buttons does lock you into typing on that board, as none other have them.
I agree with the use of one-shot modifiers, and had not previously found a use for the QMK âcombosâ, but the quote marks work well.
As an adopter of RSTHD I am glad to see others around me doing the same thing. I see in this layout the potential of being to Malt what Colemak is to Dvorak - the most modern layout for Maltron descendant boards.
I also happen to live in Wales and then Jersey and people will discuss the importance of the ancient languages (Welsh and Jerriais) remaining âliving languagesâ - in use at large and being adapted to modern situations. How can RSTHD become a âliving layoutâ like Colemak, of even Norman and Workman? It is most important for a user base to be established and I reckon that is better done at this stage with the layout we got. That is why, on my Minidox, I am making effort to keep the alpha layer as close as possible to a cropped version of the Ergodox layout and restrict myself to clever things to retain the functionality that got cropped off.
At a personal level I know I would do a lot better to practice and get faster with the existing layout (and stop rendering my keyboard unusable with constant alterations to its behaviour, lol) than to change again. When we share a âliving layoutâ with a large user base arguing in favour of a change to overcome some apparent flaw, I will possibly change my mind.
Of course I canât stop you hacking if you want, I just feel at this stage it would be better - for those sharing an aspiration for âliving layoutâ that embodied a âModern Maltâ - to form a united front behind the best candidate, that at this point I feel is RSTHD.
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I set this up with QMK, fearing the worse. The examples of âcombosâ only seemed involve pairs of keys, and almost everything in QMK seems to employ a bit of cutting and pasting code into the keymap as soon as you go only a little bit off-piste. So it was a pleasant surprise to find it works - pressing all four keys generates the double quote. Unfortunately it registers the chord for single quote at the same time!
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I donât know QMK; Iâve only used the Keyboardio one - but canât you tell the single quote combo not to trigger if the additional keys for the double quote combo are pressed?
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Thatâs an interesting analogy. But living languages have dialects⌠In keyboard-land, colemak has mod-DH for example. My âdialectâ reduces lateral finger movement and effort on pinkies and index fingers. Iâm sure I can speak the official language as well 
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I donât think so - I didnât find it anyway.
Iâm curious about the motivation for this. How do you type a sequence of CAPS?
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With OneShot, hitting a modifier twice locks it, so I just hit Shift twice and then type the sequence of caps.
The motivation is that itâs much faster, easier on my hands, and it means I only need one of each modifier.
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Okay, I think this is the best I am likely to do for now on the minidox. I look forward to applying a lot of what I have learnt to the Atreus, when I get one.
I foresee the different behaviour of shift on the left and right causing a problem, so I will just have to se how that goes. After a period of testing I envision uploading this keymap to QMK official repository and hope that others also enjoy using it.
Comma-chord seems to be a keeper! Enter can be activated by tapping the right shift or combo of D and M.
I got rid of tap dance for now. This means making do without the ? and ! on the , and . (although this is still shown on above chart). These are compensated by putting them as combos on the K-Z and B-X, on the nav layer and in their traditional locations as shifted â1â and â/â. The brackets are also different to that shown.
I am struggling to think of many instances where the pairs used in my combos (DM, HN, KZ and BX are typed consecutively in either direction. This should prevent misfires.
My impression is that, whilst the basic letters remain in the same place, it will take a little time to become confident after making so many changes including a swap of the nav and number clusters. Nonetheless I feel that this will address many of the things that have been narking me a little up to now.
Liberty for all I suppose. I would however argue that Colemak-DH was a response to something that many users were finding to be a flaw, and presumably would have gone through some sort of collective process to agree what the best modification would be.
To put it bluntly, I doubt you have yet spent enough time with the layout to know where its flaws are yet. I certainly havenât! And I have a hunch that the model used to develop RSTHD is more sophisticated than STeveP layout analyser (hunch based on names of scoring criteria, so not watertight!), and that it risks diluting the original concept to make modifications based on a different model.
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Yes, the analyzer is a bit simplistic, but that doesnât mean it doesnât produce useful information. I guess I wonder why you are changing the character arrangement yourselfâŚ
Yes and noâŚ
Only taking great pains to keep the basic layer the same! Here is the basic layer: my layout is absolutely identical within the cropped area, no?
The work is to regain the functionality that is cropped off, and I donât apologise for using all the imagination I can bring to bear on the problem. The formerly upstanding Ctrl, Alt and Gui now lie down in the outer bottom corners underneath the layout. The number and nav from top and bottom are assigned mainly to the left and right half in their respective layers.
So much for the general strategy, there is still room for inventiveness. I think even with the QWERTY layout on Scholes staggered rows there is still room for innovation such as the Happy Hacker, and with hardware like the Atreus it seems there is still no agreed right or wrong way to do the thumb clusters.
As for Shift + (, .) = (< >), I think I used them last back in the 90s when we all had a go at coding our websites in raw HTML!
@frogmouth, layouts are very individual things - a tailored suit always fits better than one off the shelf. While research might tell you what layout is best for the average person, itâs hard to imagine that individuals couldnât improve on that personally.
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Well, I think it probably depends on the physical nature of the keyboard as well. We (squizzler and I) have introduced that variable, due to scarcity of keyboardio keyboards at present.
Well, no, as you subsequently said. In fact, limiting to this âcropped areaâ already breaks the assumptions built into the optimizer that generated the layout.
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I see this as a very spurious argument: the 40% Vortex Core doesnât abandon QWERTY because they omit the number row and the user will have to learn new tricks anyway. The point is that the Atreus user is likely to also own a big workstation keyboard and thus I kept the base layer keys in the same place. This is in the spirit of this thread - it started as how best to scale down the Malt layout to the model01 and has turned to discussing how to adapt RSTHD to the Atreus (I took this liberty as these layouts share some characteristics). There is already a thread for discussions pertaining to the merits of various letter arrangements here. You should find a larger audience to debate with there!
In the meantime I will attempt to bring what I learnt with the Minidox to a proposed Atreus keymap, although the minidox has proved so successful I am starting to wonder if I need those extra keys on the Atreus after all
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The reason for not posting on this forum for a while is that I had been working on my minidox layout on which I am pleased to report I have got it working totally to my satisfaction. I would like to thank you @frogmouth and @fire in particular for your numerous posts, as it really helped me bounce ideas around and make what I feel is a great breakthrough. So much so, in fact, that it is now submitted as one of the official QMK maps for this hardware.
I hope to produce a diagram how I would implement this on Atreus, simply because I want others to join me in using this amazing layout. I will possibly be starting a new thread to do so, but there is a problem categorising threads: there is a category for Model 01 layouts but not one for Atreus layouts.
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Neato. I guess the center column combo one-shots are duplicates of the mod-taps on the lower row, I am curious whether you find you prefer one to the other?
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The one shot modifiers of the virtual âcentralâ column are not something I use at all in practice, but this might because I was already habituated to use the mod-tap sets. So much so that i am thinking of keeping this location rather that proceed with the intuitive response of porting to the Atreus which would put them underneath, as per modifier location on legacy keyboard.
I am writing up my proposed port to the Atreus which will probably go in a new thread. So despite what might seem my rather sniffy response to messing around with the letter layout 
feel free to discuss Malt inspired layouts generally. Certainly for my part the current minidox layout has been a game changer although the letters are the same; the difference is that of moving from a house with rotten floorboards (those being dual function keys which were easy to trigger by mistake) to one with solid footing. Now at last I feel I can start typing effectively.
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oh, i have used malt and rsthd layout for some months. the layouts were ok. but there are some letters that are placed less than ideal if i type in non-english language. for maltâs, aâs placement is less than ideal in, e.g. indonesia where aâs frequency iirc is a bit more than englishâ e. for rsthd, k and bâs placements are also less than ideal because those two letters are used pretty frequently too.
so, i threw the letters around randomly based on gut feeling and hereâs the result:
q v c p b . l u y z
r s t h d f n a i o
' j g k x ; m w , /
e _
some features that i use are combos, hold-tap thing, and layers on thumbs (e and spc) and index fingers.(h and n).
overall, i am fine with it and donât think i want to spend any more effort after, i think, reached the point of diminishing return.
edit: to clarify, i use 36 keys keyboards.
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