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
The bites/chips along the bottom edge are a production problem. I've never seen this before in an SP set. Something in the molding or extraction or the handling during cooling phase created those marks. They would probably be hidden in normal use on 99% of keyboards but that doesn't make it OK. I'll ask Yanbo what our options are. Since the frequency and severity of the chipping varies we might not be able to address this from the top down as part of a reorder.
The branching hair lines are swirl marks or "weld lines". I explained this a few pages back but it's basically the leading edge of the plastic, as it gets forced around the corners of the mold it begins to cool. When those leading edges collide on the opposite side they don't blend perfectly because they're cooler and this creates the appearance of faint lines. SP has techniques they can use to minimize swirl (like tweaking the mold temperature) but it's still almost impossible to eliminate completely, particularly from the larger keys -- I think just about everyone's Right Shift has some degree of swirl, for example. This is not considered a defect, however this might be the most swirl I've ever seen in an SP set. It's possible that the color plastic we chose for the mods has an effect on showing swirl more than usual. I'll inquire about it.
Update: Yanbo and I are finalizing our report to SP for the replacement keys. I'll post it once it's been accepted by SP.