Dvarf

Dvarf is essentially my attempt at modding Dvorak. The name is a combination of Dvorak, Whorf and Dwarf, which are the layouts it takes most of its inspiration from. It has 10 keys that are the same as Dvorak, 9 if you go for the alternative punct setup with ; on top left pinky.

Initially I tried to stay as close to Dvorak as possible, but I pretty quickly realised there's not really a lot you can do to stay very true to it without creating something that's equally janky. You obviously can't keep the vowels as they are and there's sfbs on every single finger on the right hand. This means that in order to begin fixing everything that's wrong with Dvorak, you already have to change some 10 keys. At that point I just tried keeping the right hand homerow + r and go from there. a ui oe keeps at least 2 of the vowels the same so that is what I chose for the vowel block, the left index is straight from Whorf.

This left the right hand to basically do what I wanted with it, which somehow ended up being far more constrained that I expected. If dtb wasn't a thing this layout would probably not exist. r was also helpful here because rn is a very comfy slide, there is literally no other place it could go. The keys that are in their original Dvorak positions account for about 55% of use, which all in all could honestly be worse.

The layout still has a lot of issues, but it has good sfb and decent dsfb, good rolls and not a lot of very weird patterns. snth is a surprisingly nice homerow to have. I like this vowel setup a lot, but it depends on the person. i eu oa could have also worked but that would have fewer keys in common with Dvorak. If you prefer ring over middle usage though, do consider this instead of the default setup.

Its main problems however reside in its redirects. A byproduct of having p and g on the vowel hand is a bunch of strange redirects in words like against or people. This is further exacerbated by the fact these are on inner index which means they also bring a lot of lsbs in addition. I did this because I was fixated on keeping nice combinations with ou in you, wou and cou but they're really not as important as they were in my head at the time. This is not the end of the world, but it could be better. If I'd make this layout now I'd probably cycle cygw.

There are also a few things on right hand that aren't ideal. To keep ld and bl sane I put l on inner index. I really don't think bl is as important nowadays and so I'd probably swap lv, but that still leaves br. Minor, but could be better of course.

All in all though this is a decent layout, and coming from Dvorak myself I liked using it for a while. I would however strongly recommend the swaps I talk about here.