So I should be getting a ~~Piantor~~Ferris Sweep* from Beekeeb in a number of weeks and I thought I would get a head start and plan my layout - or at least one version of it, influenced heavily by Ben Vallack's video about avoiding press-and-hold mechanics.
Still plenty of fiddling to do. I want to move the WASD-style cursor keys in L3 onto my first three fingers for sure. In fact I've already changed it and made room for insert and added shift as a home key mod on the right. God this is addictive.
*ETA: I am, of course, talking about a Ferris Sweep with two thumb keys as depicted in the drawings not a Piantor, which I was also considering. I guess I was swayed by the alliteration.
I use tab for auto completionior move through menus a lot and ESC for vim. Having those in a different layer will duplicate a lot of key presses. Not for me, I rather use a 3 thumbs.
Yes that is a big factor that would sway me towards six columns. But I figured there is a difference between asking my index finger to do an extra bit of work to reach for column one and asking my pinky - my smallest and weakest finger - to reach for column six.
I do have doubts about having ESC and TAB on column five for that same reason. My pinky should be doing as little work as possible. I like the consistency of having SPACE and ENTER across all layers but maybe there is an argument for having ESC on a thumb key on layer 2, so at least it's just a kind of rat-a-tat-tat (well more of a ba-dap) of two thumb keys to get into normal mode in Vim? That would allow me to put backtick in layer one where ESC is too...
I use tab on a thumb key and ESC as a combo of QW on qwerty. I use both Vim and tab a lot and find this to work quite well for me. This is with 2 thumbs.
Just wanted to share my setup since we seem to have some similar uses