Design

Night

B F L K Q  P G O U .
N S H T M  Y C A E I
X V J D Z  ' W ; / ,
      R
									

DTMK Index

K Q
T M
D Z
									

The primary focuses of Night are great statistics (extremely low SFBs and SFSs) and focused finger usage.

Particularly, Night likes high index usage - the most dexterous finger. The most common consonant and hence, commonly preferred index came to be T (see: Colemak). Of the letter pairings, DTMK is the most appropriate choice. DTMK allows for great stats while not requiring the usage of corner index keys.

Having three high usage letters plus a fourth low usage key would already result in a good bit of movement; adding more, especially to the longer distance corner keys, could quickly overload the index and make it uncomfortable to use.

While it may seem strange to put M in the middle column causing more LSBs, the frequency of M_D such as MAD results in a higher movement distance (a lot of 2uSFSs) compared to adding just a bit more LSBs. Furthemore, most of the SFSs generated from this setup can be alted.

LHJ Middle

L K Q
H T M
J D Z
									

In most R letter-thumb utilizing layouts, M is paired with L and H. This is done due to the great stats it offers (exceptionally low SFBs for the frequency). However, this high usage naturally comes with the consequence of high movement. Thus, having this on the index would be ideal (see: Dusk). Nonetheless, the consequence of this setup is the lack of a fourth pairing - making an index setup wasteful. While LHMK is usable, statistically, DTMK is superior - it has greater usage on the homerow, T, and lower SFBs as a whole. Thus, Night simply omits M by having LHJ - J being considered a dead key due to its insignificant usage - placed on the middle finger and its low interactions with L and H. A side advantage of this setup is the removal of middle-curl scissors.

FSV Ring

F L K Q
S H T M
V J D Z
									

One of the most common layout setups has S on the pinky. This is chosen due to its lower usage compared to other consonants. Furthermore, the V key can be easily stacked on top of S for, again, near perfect stats. However, one consequence of using S on the pinky is its repeat commonality. SS is the fourth [MR Corpus] most common repeat letter right behind O. Although again usable, it is not ideal. Placing it on a stronger finger, like the ring, would work better. This is precisely what Night does. Beyond this, S also pairs well with F, again with great statistics. Thus, FSV is chosen for the ring finger.

BNX Pinky

B F L K Q
N S H T M
X V J D Z
									

Ultra low SFB and SFS, it is a great stack to use for pinky. The usage is reasonable and maintains only one non-dead letter not on the homerow, B.

Vowel Setup / Right Hand

P G O U .
Y C A E I
' W ; / ,
									

Night uses a semi-traditional Whorf-styled index CPWYG and AEI vowel block. This is necessary for the best statistics (See: Theory). For the modifications, Y is chosen to be placed on the homerow. Similar to M in DTMK, this is necessary to ensure the lowest movement. The reason Y is not placed on the index is due to its irregular frequency. In corpuses like movies, it is extremely common due to YOU, however, in other corpuses like Shai, it is rather rare. C, on the other hand is similar to Y, but is comparatively more consistent in terms of frequency.

W is chosen to be on the bottom row curl position for its frequency in small corpuses (like English-200). G is then delegated to be on the top row. P is chosen to be on the corner for its lower frequency. However, there is some nuance to this. Primarily, P_W is somewhat frequent on speedtyping corpuses (like Monkeytype Quotes and Typeracer) - because of POWER. However, in everyday typing, it is much rarer. Rather, the reason P is chosen to be in the top corner is due to the frequency of PO | P_O. Being on the bottom corner creates a rather uncomfortable LSB.

Finally, ' is chosen to be placed on the bottom corner. This is because Y' is a somewhat existent SFB Ex. they've. For this reason, it is delegated to the bottom so a Y' slide is be convenient.

Overall Structure FAQs

Q: Why is R on the left thumb?
A: R is placed on the left thumb due to it creating lower redirects compared to that of right thumb.

Q: Can you use R on the right thumb?
A: Yes, actually! If you account for space redirects, indeed R is actually better on the right thumb - it gets you some extra rolls too! The main reason this isn't inherently recommended is because space interacts fundamentally different from other letters. It's far easier to associate the end of a word with space and thus mentally reject the redirect compared to that of a letter. While this is purely just psychological, it is still incredibly powerful.

Q: Why use NSHT instead of SNHT?
A: As previously mentioned, I wanted to avoid the common SS repeat to be on the pinky. Furthermore, FSV works better than the corresponding PNB which would replace it (more SFSs).

For more FAQs, check the Theory page!

Nightingale

B F L D V  P W O U .
N S H T M  C Y A E I
X Z J K Q  ' G ; / ,
      R
									

Nightingale is a modifcation of Night. It is actually the predecessor to Night and focused on partial same row maximization and curl minimization. Nightingale sacrifies the corner key usage for the removal of V from FSV and swaps D | W and K | G. This creates a three-deadkey setup on the left hand - avoiding the somewhat frequent L_V trigram. These keys are then placed on the top row, and corner key respectively. The index is also reordered with a CY swap. This enables more slides and makes alting less necessary Ex. P__C, W_Y, etc.. The former pairs Dclose to L (frequent consonant bigram), and right hand W closer to O (extremely frequent bigram).

These swaps adds additional comfort and reduces movement at the cost of some SFBs and SFSs. It is still of my opinion that Nightingale is a far more interesting layout than Night, but nonetheless Night performs traditionally better.

Negatives

I would love to say there are none, but like any layout, Night has its flaws. The primary complain is the P position on Night. On a traditional rowstag keyboard, this key would be delegated to the bottom right corner. This is because the shifting of the bottom row creates a very good corner position. However, Night being primarily intended for colstag keyboards, does not have this luxury. Thus, P is forced to be relegated to the top corner for LSBs.

The second complaint Nightingale resolves, the V position. In Night, this causes the somewhat frequent L_V trigram commonly found in words like LOVE. Furthermore, some people just do not like ring curls

The third complaint is the right index setup. CPYWG although great for statistics, is not loved by many. This is because of the low usage, high movement pairing. Most would much rather prefer a high usage homerow key plus semi-frequent pairings.

History | Step-by-step

This section will feature the entire thought process from beginning to end of the design of Night and Nightingale. It will be one long block of text and is not important in understanding the layouts. However, if you plan on developing your own keyboard layout, you may want to consider this. This will also reference other keyboard layouts. If you see a weird word, it is probably that.

Chapter 1: PBLD

The design of Night began shortly after the full release of Dusk, and I, reaching 160 WPM (MT 60s) with Stern. Stern is originally designed months before and is my follow-up to Strand (a modification by me to Oxey's Sturdy_thumbn). Although Stern is a nice layout, especially having no corner key uage, the stacks used on Stern are rather high usage. DTK and LHM on ring and middle respectively are not ideal. So, after reaching 160 WPM, I started development on Nightingale. My layout style is almost always high alternation over high roll, and the same can be said for Nightingale. However, I still wanted to maximize same row interactions. I intended to use a LH_ middle from the start (I just personally really like it), thus finding and placing keys that commonly interacted with L on the same row is a priority. The ones I initially settled on were: P: Place, Plan, Play, Help, B: Blow, Black, Blue, Able, etc. D: Would, World, Could, Middle, etc.. Nightingale focused on placing these keys (in relation to L) on the same row to encourage a same-row finger motion - a bigram roll persay. You may notice P being present in the list and F being absent. This is because the original layout, called PBLD, used PNX, BNV, LHJ, DTMK stacks with DTMK being arranged vertically. If you know anything about layout theory, this block has some problems. First, PN is not a great stack. Although very optimized in SFBs, a PN stack suffers in SFSs. Having this on the pinky is an especially bad idea. When I first published this layout, ddn, a very well known layout creator in the AKL discord, suggested to swap the keys around to have a FBLD setup. This fixes the SFSs and shifts P to the right index. At this point, the layout featured an S pinky and N ring, along with a vertically stacked DTMK index. The ideal of a vertically stacked DTMK is purely based upon effort keymaps. D had to be paired close to L, M is more common than K, and thus M is relegated to the bottom index curl position and K into the center column middle position. Although this is a seemingly good setup, it has a hidden problem: M_D. This SFS, although not the most common, is still very unideal. By placing these on the top and bottom row, you create a 2U SFS that is significantly worse than a normal SFS. Thus, the easiest way to fix this, which both Night and Nightingale adopts, is placing M in middle column middle position. This reduces the distance between D and M significantly, and still maintains good distance relations between the other keys (K_D is significantly rarer by more than half). I have to admit, this idea is inspired by Dusk. You sacrifice some traditional key position comfort for movement gains - much more beneficial in this context.

Chapter 2: Nightingale

Nightingale is finalized from ddn's suggestion to have an FBLD layout setup. Nightingale swaps the FS | BN stacks to create BNX | FSV. A small, but significant swap that further optimizes stats and comfort in usage. Next, to avoid FSBs, Nightingale swaps the V and Z keys to create a DTMKV index. You may remember from the previous section I discussed how having corner key usage is not ideal in such a high usage index. I still stand by that; However, this setup does remove all non-index FSBs as well as creating the three dead-key setup on the left hand. The stats hit from this are shown, however, if this no-full scissor setup is important to you, it may be worth the stats loss. Lastly, Nightingale uses a Y index as opposed to a C index. This setup, although just one swap, is actually more ideal compared to the C index Night uses. This is because P_C and W_Y, both common skipgrams, are now aligned instead of being diagonal. This leads to easier sliding (if you use that technique) and just reduces distance by a bit. To this day, I still regard Nightingale as the more interesting layout of the two. The, essentially, removal of FSBs, maximized same row usage, and still extremely low bad redirects makes it a very interesting layout to consider. I did actually use this; Check "My Review" for my thoughts - and why I switched away from it.

Chapter 3: Night

Night is the final iteration of the Night layout family. There are a few others in this family that will be listed in the mods section. The reason I do not directly mention them is due to them simply not performing well compared Night itself. Speaking of which, Night is but a simple swap from Nightingale. Creation of FSV ring, shifting of D, W into the curl positions (and related), C index, and that is about it. Going through each one, FSV is done simply because it provides better stats and I preferred tanking the scissors over more skipgrams. Similarily, the D, W swap into the curl positions is for comfort (especially on Dactyl which I is testing at the time) and, again, I do not mind scissors. Finally, the C index swap, albeit a little mental, is done specifically for English-200 (Monkeytype default corpus). Y is very under represented in the corpus, while C is a little over. This leads to an awkward situation where lateral stretch usage is higher than that of homekey usage. This problem is not present on "everyday typing," but is annoying enough that I decided to move away from it (check the mods section, I used a F index at one point). These three changes, although small, made a big enough difference in the typing experience that I felt they deserved seperate names. Night is the current layout I am using, and what I will use until I hit 200 WPM on MT 60s. Check "My Review" for more details, but this layout is where I likely will stay. There are a few awkward sequences such as people and the layout not being symmetrical in terms of movement, but it is more than good to use, and that is good enough for me.