X-Type Keyboard Layout

Overview

Designed at 15 by uploading a hand-built corpus of Hindi, Hinglish, and English text to the Patorjk Keyboard Layout Analyzer and iterating key positions until X-Type beat every mainstream alternative on finger-travel and same-finger-bigram metrics. The macOS implementation uses Karabiner-Elements with two JSON files defining tap-hold dual-purpose symbol modifier layers — accessing all programming symbols without leaving home row. 11 years of daily use across four operating systems grew the typing speed from 90 WPM to 213 WPM.

Tech

The macOS implementation is a pair of Karabiner-Elements complex modification JSON files — xtype-left-symbols.json and xtype-right-symbols.json — using named variables for layer state and tap-hold dual-purpose keys with a 300ms disambiguation window. Android used Java with the InputMethodService API. Linux uses XKB. The custom corpus drove the entire optimisation rather than a standard English frequency table.