The first keyboard layout standard for the Romanian language was SR-13392:1998 (ASRO). It has never been implemented by any computer operating system. This standard has been replaced by SR-13392:2004 (ASRO), which we evaluate bellow.

a. The Currently Most Used Romanian Layout (Microsoft)

The most used (due to circumstances) keyboard layout for the Romanian language does not conform to the current SR-13392:2004 standard, but it is included with the Windows operating system. It has been created by Microsoft long ago - obviously by some employee who had no knowledge of the Romanian language.

The Microsoft layout is used at great pain by users who thought it must be OK because it comes with the OS. In reality, one can hardly imagine something worse.  This layout is so blatantly confusing, one might doubt any interest on the part of the author. In short, it squeezed all Romanian characters onto the little right finger, and dislocated important characters that are so hard to find that users constantly switch to the US layout even when typing Romanian only. But here is the layout comparison presented in detail:

The Microsoft layout presents the following disadvantages:

1. It maps all diacritic characters to the very right side of the keyboard, forcing the user to use only one finger - the little finger of the right hand - for any of them, in spite of the fact that diacritic characters are frequent in Romanian.
2. It takes not into consideration the current QWERTY typing skills of users. Thus,
   • The letter Ă, when used with Romanian language words, mostly replaces the letter A, as an alternative pronunciation of this letter. Consequently, given the current user typing skills, the letter Ă should be located in the very proximity of the letter A, not anywhere else.
   • The letter Ş, when used with Romanian language words, mostly replaces the letter S, as an alternative pronunciation of this letter. Consequently, given the current user typing skills, the letter Ş should be located in the very proximity of the letter S, not anywhere else.
   • a.s.o. (the same for Â, Ţ, and Î)
3. It takes not into consideration that the vast majority of the hardware keyboards in use are US standard keyboards. The Romanian diacritic letters are not printed on keys. The user should be able to easily guess the location of a letter that is not printed on keys, which is not the case with this layout.
4. It switches the QWERTY keys Z and Y, like with the QWERTZ keyboard. But the vast majority of users have no QWERTZ typing skills.
5. It relocates a large number of non-alphabetic characters like @, ;, :, [, ], ?, -, _, and others. But characters printed on keys of most keyboards used by Romanian typists still conform to the straight QWERTY standard.
6. Most users never learn the new locations of such characters as @, ;, :, [, ], ?, -, _, especially because in most cases these characters are printed on the wrong keys (the original QWERTY keys).
7. An important side effect of using this layout is frequent switching between the Romanian and US layouts, because most users don't know the location of important characters (point vi. above), and need to switch back to the US keyboard to find them.

b. Other Layouts

The newer SR-13392:2004 standard includes two separate layouts (a primary and a secondary one). Both are described in full detail at http://www.secarica.ro/html/ro_keyboard.html by Cristian Secară, the primary contributor to this development. Although these layouts are not (by far) as widely used as the one above, they did succeed in being recognized as a standard, and thus we need to evaluate them here.

The primary standard layout, based on the QWERTY layout, by not relocating important characters (point iv. and v. above), does address issues presented above at points iv., v., vi., and vii. However, because the diacritic letters remain on the same extreme right hand positions as with point a. above, this layout presents the following disadvantages:

1. Same as point i. above.
2. Same as point ii. above.
3. Same as point iii. above.

The secondary standard layout, also based on the QWERTY layout, does address the i., ii., and iii. issues, but at the expense of introducing a new, major one. According to this layout, each of the diacritic letters resides on its base letter key, but it can only be accessed through the AltGr key. Thus,
ă is AltGr + A,
Ă is AltGr + Shift + A,
ş is AltGr + S,
a.s.o., with one exception: Â resides on the Q key, as the A key has already been occupied by Ă.
Consequently, this layout has the following drawback:

8. Typing becomes excessively difficult because of the frequency of the diacritic letters in Romanian (for instance, letter Ă is statistically more frequent then regular letters like D, M, B, F, G). Each time a diacritic letter is typed, the AltGr or AltGr + Shift combination must be used.

It is an object of Ergo Romanian therefore to overcome or at least mitigate these problems.

c. Objects of Ergo Romanian (and advantages)

The main object of Ergo Romanian is to provide a mapping (layout) and method of operation for the Romanian alphabetic diacritic characters on QWERTY (standard) keyboards, so that typing fluency is much improved when compared to prior layouts.

Other objects and advantages of Ergo Romanian are:

1. To provide a layout where diacritic characters are accessed with multiple fingers, as opposed to one finger in some prior art. This dramatically improves on typing fluency.
2. To provide a layout where the current typing skills of users are taken into consideration, so that typing diacritic letters smoothly integrates with typing the rest of the letters on keyboards that users are familiar with. This also improves on typing fluency.
3. To provide a layout where users can easily locate diacritic letters, even on existing keyboards with no labels for the Romanian diacritic letters.
4. To provide a layout that avoids switching the letters Z and Y, maintaining standard positions on QWERTY keyboards, as opposed to some prior art.
5. To provide a layout that implementers can use directly, leaving all non-alphabetic characters in place.
6. To provide a layout that requires virtually no training when typists are already accustomed to the QWERTY keyboard, and when implementers of this invention leave non-alphabetic characters in place.
7. To provide a layout that requires virtually no switching back to the original hardware keyboard layout. This also improves on typing fluency.
8. To provide a layout that - except for non-Romanian letters - does not require the use of the AltGr key. This dramatically improves on typing fluency.
9. Because users virtually have no need of extra labels (iii.), Ergo Romanian facilitates the use of a straight hardware QWERTY keyboard as a bilingual English/Romanian keyboard with virtually no training (vi.).

Note. The letter Ş (and ş, lowercase), in its correct typographical form, has a comma, not a cedilla. However, given the rush towards standardization in the computer industry, some standards define the Romanian letter Ş with cedilla (like ISO-8859-2), while others with comma (like ISO-8859-16). Also, the letter Ţ has the same problem. Ergo Romanian v.2.0 has the ER1 layout for the cedilla Şş and Ţţ, and the ER2 layout for the comma versions of these letters.

SUMMARY

Ergo Romanian defines a layout and method of operation of the Romanian alphabetic diacritic characters on QWERTY keyboards, so that typing fluency is improved and regular QWERTY keyboards can be easily used when no Romanian language key labeling is present.