Shena'Fu AnySoftKeyboard Pack

Alternative, ergonomic, efficient layouts to be used with AnySoftKeyboard.

Shena'Fu 's alternative keyboard layouts for AnySoftKeyboard

Alternative, ergonomic, efficient layouts to be used with AnySoftKeyboard app.

24 layouts to choose from. Try all of them to see one which fits you best.

Design philosophy

It makes zero sense to use a ten-finger keyboard layout on a touch interface like smartphones and tablets that uses one or two fingers. Hence, we developed new layouts based on ergonomic usage explicitly for touch interfaces and on modern keyboard design philosophies. We have considered things like the popularity of letters, bigrams, and trigrams; finger, thumb, and hand physiology; screen dimensions; etc. In particular, the space is the most frequent character, even more than letters, so its button is place conveniently under the finger or thumb so you don't waste time and effort to move your finger and thumb down to reach it.

Recommended Layouts

While we provide 24 layouts (possibly more in the future), we do have a few favorites that we recommend.

Hex 36 (and its relatives Hex Hung, HexCluster, and HexaLiteral) are our most highly recommended layouts. They have staggered buttons to reduce the distance between them, which means less fatigue from typing, but also more intuitive and flows better. They also come with numbers on the side and frequent punctuations.

"Righty" layout is the most highly recommended if you prefer to type with both thumbs. The right thumb types most of the letters, while the left thumb hits the space and shift and numbers. The brackets are nice for editing wikis.

WHTARKX layout is also nice if you prefer intuitive grid layout. It also has a square numpad on the side and frequently used punctuations.

Vowel Sandwich layout puts the vowels in a row to make them easy to find and remember their placements. It has a numpad on the side.

BEAKL for 2-hand 10-finger typing on tablet landscape. Set AnySoftKeyboard keys to height of 0.7. Home row is middle row. Use thumbs to hit shift and backspace.