An optimized Bulgarian keyboard layout based on Colemak.
This is a keyboard layout that I initially posted back in 2014 on the Colemak forums here: https://forum.colemak.com/topic/1934-optimizing-colemak-for-bulgarian-cyrillic/
This is a quote from my post there explaining how I optimized the layout:
Here is how I approached the problem of fitting all 30 bg letters on a standard us keyboard.
First, I generated several layouts trying to optimize each of them:
1) based on letter frequency (in Bulgarian; not Russian, English, or another language)
2) by minimizing the amount of disruption to the base Colemak layout
3) using several training text (fiction, non-fiction, wikipedia and newspaper articles) in
Bulgarian to do a more detailed analysis using the website:
[http://patorjk.com/keyboard-layout-analyzer/#/main](http://patorjk.com/keyboard-layout-analyzer/#/main)
(The analysis was a bit of a pain as the website does not accept user-based layouts, so
I had to map cyrillic letters in my test layouts to latin letters on existing layouts, and so on, and so on ...)
4) using common sense
I ended up with several more or less equivalent layouts according to the subjective and objective measures above.
I tested them for a month or so, and ended up with the following "best" layout, which I have been using for
almost a year now (touch typing of course) without any wrist injuries! ;)
Now I've been using that layout for 10 years and decided to share it in case others are interested.
Copy bg_optim to /usr/share/X11/xkb/symbols/.
Then copy evdev.xml to /usr/share/X11/xkb/rules/.
Log out and log in. The layout Bulgarian (optimized) should be available after that.