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Halmak

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Finger 123478910
Usage 8.35% (P96)9.48% (P87)10.59% (P29)12.10% (P39)11.10% (P47)12.16% (P27)10.02% (P62)8.98% (P95)
Same Finger Full Scissor Half Scissor Lat. Stretch
Bigram 2.09% (P88) 0.03% (P10) 1.71% (P58) 0.35% (P16)
Skipgram 4.53% (P45) 0.19% (P33) 1.81% (P16) 0.59% (P5)
No Thumbs Left Space Right Space
Weak-ish Redirs. 0.46% (P26) 1.18% (P77) 1.20% (P86)
Weak Redirects 0.31% (P49) 0.15% (P50) 0.15% (P50)
Other Same Finger 21.50% (P74) 14.66% (P82) 14.66% (P82)
Rolls : Alts 1.15 (P4) 1.61 (P39) 1.34 (P17)
2-Roll In : Out 1.06 (P39) 0.93 (P34) 1.15 (P52)
3-Roll In : Out 2.65 (P66) 0.75 (P22) 1.48 (P59)
Author
Nikolay Nemshilov
Year
2016
Finger Map
Traditional
GitHub Repository

Halmak is notable for being the first keyboard layout claimed to be designed by AI. The program used to create Halmak is similar to Klausler’s evolution program in that both programs simulate a series of typing tournaments and the winners of each round undergo mutations to produce the next generation of competitors. Unlike Klausler, Halmak’s genetics program evaluates layouts based on hand-chosen penalties rather than empirical keystroke timing data. Other evolutionary programs such as CarpalX take this latter approach as well, though most commonly using simulated annealing instead of tournaments.

Halmak heavily de-emphasizes center column usage, and was the first layout to push punctuation into the center columns to do so. Halmak claims to be “30% better than the best thing”. As far as stats go, its hand usage is almost exactly 50%/50% (excluding thumbs), and it successfully de-emphasizes the index fingers. However, it has high SFBs and SFTs relative to MTGAP, another evolved layout, and Colemak Mod-DH, which came out two years prior and also de-emphasizes center columns.

Install

Section titled “Install”

Kanata is a keyboard remapper that works on Windows, macOS, and Linux.

  1. Install Kanata by following “Step 1: Set Up Kanata” in Nova’s Kanata setup guide:

    Step 1: Set Up Kanata (Kanata Guide for Alt Layouts)

  2. Download the Kanata config file for Halmak:

    Halmak

  3. Make sure you know how to type your computer password using Halmak.

  4. Run Kanata with the downloaded config file and make sure the layout works as you expect: 

    kanata --cfg path/to/config.kbd

  5. To have Halmak activate whenever your computer starts up, follow the instructions to “Automatically start Kanata”:

    Automatically start Kanata (Kanata Guide for Alt Layouts)