By default they're laid out the same way arcade buttons would be:
Lights on the left, heavies on the right, punches on top, kicks on bottom. That should be easy enough to remember.
It really is better to learn the buttons, and by extension your moves, by what they
do rather than one set of mappings. It provides an important semantic meaning for how punches and kicks work, and how light/medium/heavy works.
If the movelist was written with mappings in mind, you would see:
Ringlet Spike (close): QCF+A
Ringlet Spike (mid range): QCF+S
Ringlet Spike (far): QCF+D
Gregor Samson: QCF+A+S or QCF+A+D or QCF+S+D
as opposed to this:
Ringlet Spike: QCF+P, strength determines distance
Gregor Samson: QCF+PP
Which makes more sense? Which is easier to remember? Imagine trying to remember every version of every move the first way, rather than just condensing it into knowing whether a move uses P or K and then remembering that light, medium, and heavy translate into corresponding properties, and that supers are done with any two Ps or any two Ks.
How about if I tried to explain chains by saying:
Parasoul has a 3 hit ground chain, which means she can go from A or Z to S or X to D or C.
when instead I could just say:
Parasoul has a 3 hit ground chain, which means she can go from any light to any medium to any heavy.
That first one was a mouthful, is kind of confusing with all those 'or's, and it's hard to just memorize that order without any meaning attached to it. The second explanation is much clearer, and the order is perfectly intuitive.
