[rgoulter]

> less keys = more cognitive overhead.

Right.

The benefits of reducing hand travel / stretching come at the cost of additional complexity. Not everyone will be comfortable with that complexity.

I find the complexity acceptable; and in many ways more coherent than traditional layouts. e.g. I'd keep slash and backslash (/\) adjacent (or otherwise paired); a question mark (?) is frequent enough even in prose; so, pipe (|) remains paired to backslash. -- But, yeah, it can be annoying for keys which are used very infrequently.

[sleepybrett]

i have almost 0 hand travel on my kinesis advantage. It lacks f-keys (layered on the numrow) and it has another layer for a keypad (front printed on the keys .. square of u-p m-/)... but also zmk so I could reprogram it if I wanted. It's a 76 ( if I'm counting right) key layout.