Russell, you're right in saying my configurations to date involve the
fingers being less curled than what you're calling the neutral
position. Your relaxed hand would get closer to what I like if you
let your arm hang straight down at your side. What it comes to, I
think is do we or do we not believe that a "relaxed" position makes a
good "ready" position. This might be a matter of individual
physiology but I'd bet not.

There's a couple of good things about the way I did it. The trivial
one is that when the finger curls a lot the middle phalanx disappears
behind a pillow of flesh and the directions of action of the 2
switches become either perpendicular (distal and middle) or opposite
(distal and proximal). Now it so happened somebody had already
patented a configuration where you grip the keyboard like a deck of
cards and work buttons on its opposite sides with the distal and
proximal, with the fingers tightly curled. Another patent called for
buttons on the thin side of the deck, worked by the middle phalanx or
the distal. These configurations don't work at all (holding that much
curl is tiring and it's very hard to learn to grip and type with the
same fingers) but that doesn't matter to the USPTO, who think such
things constitute prior art. I would say 90% or more of all patents
are worthless for one reason or another except as prior art to be
worked around when you apply for another (probably also worthless)
patent :-).

A more substantial reason is that when I tried configurations with the
typing fingers free but still curled I found it hard to type for very
long. I should put up some pictures of my failed prototypes. There
are a variety of "relaxed" finger positions. It does seem like one
"relaxed" position should be as good as the next as a base position
for a typing finger but I don't think it's true. Consider the qwerty.
When your fingers are over it waiting for your brain they're about
where I call for them to be. Maybe they're not relaxed but they're
ready.

Actually I think the freedom from grip duty is more important than the
ready position --- you want to move your fingers around.