As a very well-balanced all-rounder with a fresh approach to vowel configuration and punctuation positions, this is a high-performing alternative other custom keyboard layouts, most akin to Gallium and Graphite.
It's named according to the many nature-related terms visible on the vowel hand (e. g. oak, yak and German Kuh, Huf).
Its advantages are almost exclusively related to the stats of the vowel hand as the consonant hand layout is very similar to most other approaches. Comparing its vowel hand layout to most other popular custom layouts, Rustic has:
- better finger balance (load shifted from ring to the strong and more nimble index finger)
- a significantly larger share of SFBs and SFSs (or DSFBs) on the index finger, again relieving the ring finger
- a much lower amount of scissoring from having punctuation on index.
- by far the lowest amount of LSB (lateral stretch bigrams). See the comparison with Gallium below for detailed stats.
Depending on individual preference, some adjustments may have to be made with regard to ergonomics, e. g. swapping the letter pairs pz and yj.
This comparison was made with this tool I created.
Notes on the comparison with Gallium:
- Rustic has better finger balance: Around two percent of total load are shifted from the ring to the index fingers compared to Gallium.
- Per-finger SFB on the vowel hand is much better (Rustic: 72.6% of SFBs on index vs. Gallium's 51%), as is per-finger SFS (Rustic has 47% to Gallium's 38% on the index fingers).
- Hand balance is slightly better for Rustic - almost a perfect 50:50.
- Finger load: while piniky and middle finger load is more or less identical, there is considerably less stress on the right ring finger (pinkies are about the same) plus with Rustic, there is more load on the index fingers
- Period and comma are easier to type on Rustic: right index (rather than right pinky) followed by right thumb; punctuation is well placed on the central index column as the following use of the spacebar affords the hand some time to slide back into the home position.
- Per-finger SFB: Rust's higher overall SFB stat is mostly covered by the index fingers, relieving the right ring finger in particular, though right pinky SFB is slightly higher on Rustic.
- Rustic's slow three-unit SFB on the vowel index (FH) are significantly more frequent than Gallium's.
- Rustic avoid's Gallium's uncomfortable rolls for the frequent E, and E. bigrams.
- Rustic beats most other layouts on scissoring and related stats by shifting punctuation onto the index fingers.