Support for Alternative Layouts
This is a summary of how alternative layouts have been supported by kits such as Colevrak and Homing. It is not a discussion of alt layout performance and development, but if that interests you I highly recommend starting with Pascal Getreuer’s A guide to alt keyboard layouts (why, how, which one?). It’s a concise and comprehensive overview with links to some great sites that go deeper. He also has a separate Links about keyboards page. The Keyboard layouts doc he recommends explains layout goals and metrics in detail, summarizing the alt layouts discussed here as well as more than one hundred others. Sculpted-profile The majority of custom keycap sets are sculpted-profile (Cherry, SA, MT3, KAT, etc. - more on profiles generally here) so let’s start there. Because each row has a unique keycap shape, alt layouts require a unique keycap for each legend that moves off its QWERTY row. At first there were two The Dvorak layout was patented in 1936 by August Dvorak & William L....
Apr 23, 2024
Already the Esc and keypad enter keys have gotten stuck in the down position, and the Esc switch will pop off the PCB every 10 presses or so. I've come very close to losing the spring several times.
Mine also has some of the scuffing on the corners like others have posted pictures of. Not nearly as bad, but still visible.
And the best part, I can't even use it, as the USB connector wasn't even soldered on. The pressure of the back plate was holding it down enough to make contacts. When I took off the back plate to see what was going on with the switch that was popping out, the USB connector just fell off. It looks like an attempt was made to apply solder, but clearly not enough to do anything.
So:
- Poor quality control - Unusable due to switches popping off - Unusable due to the USB connector not being properly soldered - Cheap and unreadable "documentation"