What happened to Minimak?
Minimak went through a minor revision, and then was given some time for dissemination. During that time, I worked on a more full layout remapping for my personal use.
Surprisingly, the result of that experimentation was not a better remapping of the entire keyboard. Instead, I just got a better understanding of what really makes a difference and what doesn’t.
As a result, I determined that QWERTY really isn’t all that bad, it just gets one or two things very wrong. I found that you don’t actually have to remap your entire keyboard to get the best advantages of the popular layout alternatives today. You just have to fix some of the more egregious issues with QWERTY with some judicious tweaking.
The result is a new Minimak, more intelligently laid out and with far fewer key changes. While that means it’s less to learn than most other layouts, I’ve only found the learning curve to be on par with that of the original layout despite its fewer keys. That’s because it doesn’t follow the original’s finger-impulse retention scheme. Maintaining QWERTY skills along with regular QWERTY skills should be on par and easy enough as well.
Of course, it bears little resemblance to the former Minimak design, so much of what was discussed on the site before is in the process of being updated. I apologize to anyone who is disappointed with the new materials, as they are replacing the old ones. The old ones are no longer available as they are clearly superseded by the new design. Thanks for your understanding and I hope you are interested enough to give the new design a try.
If you are a Linux user interesed in the original Minimak layout, Leonardo Cecchi has forked the original repository and created an xmodmap layout with directions for usage.
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