Didn’t see a workman layout… Having tried dvorak, colemak, and workman. I found it easiest to transition from qwerty to workman. I hate to introduce yet another topic, with yet another layout, but here it is. If there’s sufficient interest, I’ll draft up a workman layout.
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By all means! I’d love some insight on what a good Workman layout would look like. I just can’t promise you’ll see Workman caps soon. -j
This is a rough sketch of what I’d been assuming for Workman. Anything that’s not a letter key, you should assume I just hadn’t gotten around to filling in yet, but maybe it gives you a starting point.
skip 1 2 3 4 5 skip skip 6 7 8 9 0 skip
` Q D R W B skip Return J F U P ; =
PageUp A S H T G Tab skip Y N E O I '
PageDn Z X M C V Esc Keymap0 K L , . / -I’m also considering switching from colemak. I thought I’d wait until getting the Model 01 as I’d probably have some re-learning to do.
Would be nice if the Model 01 Workman layout ends up like the Colemak one.
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You don’t have to wait, and even better, you can try it now if you want. thetypingcat has dvorak, colemak, workman, and many others for you to try, there are typing lessons and more importantly, an emulator that magically remaps your qwerty to blah layout. You can also try keybr.com
I’m not sure how much retraining you need to move from colemak to workman but I can tell you that workman is an easier transition from qwerty than going from qwerty to dvorak.
I ended up trying colemak and workman for a few days each and finally decided on workman based on “th”.
arstd hneio’ colemak
ashtg yneoi’ workman
Here is a non scientific evaluation/test of the layouts - qwerty, dvorak, colemak, workman.
I did manage to get to the 70+ wpm on workman, I did not get there with colemak. Of course, my testing was 3 days of each and not weeks…
My metrics were ease of transition from qwerty and comfort in typing, speed is not something I require in a layout. I would do Mon - Wed on a layout, then switch back to qwerty for the remainder of the week, the following week, I’d try a second/different layout from Mon - Wed, then again switch back to qwerty for the remainder of the week, etc. rinse, repeat. My conclusions were inline with sacrideo. Workman is much easier to transition to from qwerty and very comfortable. Since I’m not trying to win any speed typing contests, I really don’t care to match my qwerty speed (90-100 wpm).
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Thanks for the link to that article, fishheadsoup. 
I am also interested in a Workman layout, after using it since the survey about alternative layouts. 
(Just joined the forum and am currently reading threads, so I may have more to say later.)
Hi everyone. Just joined the forum last week. Been a Dvorak typist for half my life until last year, when I read some articles on ortholinear keyboards (such as the Model 01!) and how the Workman layout fits well with such a design.
I’ve been typing on Workman more in the past year at home on a traditional USB staggered-key keyboard; still use Dvorak at work (Windows 8 machine) even though I also have Workman installed there. I tried Colemak for a week, but found Workman to be a better fit for me.
Interestingly, Workman got me playing Halo 2 on my PC again, since I can re-map all the game functions from a QWERTY to a Workman layout. Couldn’t say the same about Dvorak.
What makes you want to switch from Colemak? After some further reading & consideration, I have decided to try out CMK+curl(DH) (See https://forum.colemak.com/topic/1942-moddh-for-colemak/p3/#p16151 ), before making a definitive choice.
Mainly the points about comfort listed in the experience report above.
The curl-DH mod sounds interesting, although it’s a shame it focuses only on ISO keyboards as all of mine are ANSI. I see there are a couple of ANSI versions nevertheless. I’d be interesting in hearing how you get on with the modified layout.
Since the DH-mod is a bit of a cross between CMK and Workman, I’m picking it up rather faster than I did Workman. So far, I think I do prefer it over both regular CMK (which didn’t appeal to me when I first looked into switching) and WM, roughly for the reasons given. I currently use an ISO kb, but I’m using an ANSI layout because that makes more sense given the model 1’s layout. Going to decide later where I want the Z key to be (per the wide mod).
here is a mock up
[WORKMAN] = KEYMAP_STACKED
(___, Key_1, Key_2, Key_3, Key_4, Key_5, Key_LEDEffectNext,
Key_Backtick, Key_Q, Key_D, Key_R, Key_W, Key_B, Key_Tab,
Key_PageUp, Key_A, Key_S, Key_H, Key_T, Key_G,
Key_PageDown, Key_Z, Key_X, Key_M, Key_C, Key_V, Key_Escape,
Key_LeftControl, Key_Backspace, Key_LeftShift, Key_LeftAlt,
ShiftToLayer(FUNCTION),
Key_Delete, Key_6, Key_7, Key_8, Key_9, Key_0, Key_KeypadNumLock,
Key_Enter, Key_J, Key_F, Key_U, Key_P, Key_Semicolon, Key_Equal,
Key_Y, Key_N, Key_E, Key_O, Key_I, Key_Quote,
Key_RightAlt, Key_K, Key_L, Key_Comma, Key_Period, Key_SLash, Key_Minus,
Key_RightGui, Key_RightShift, Key_Spacebar, Key_RightControl,
ShiftToLayer(FUNCTION)),
(Admin edit by @jesse to add ‘```’ around the text to make things render as preformatted text)
Edit: Thanks Jesse (for formatting my clumsy attempt).
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