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
Clears are strange. My first encounter with them was in a V60 that I got at Massdrop. I hated the switches at first - very heavy, mushy, fatiguing. I hated the tired feeling I'd get after repeated bottoming out on that increasingly heavy force curve as I'd reach the bottom of the stroke.
I ended up putting O rings on them and that made a huge difference. I enjoyed the tactility at top of the stroke, and the O ring would arrest the stroke before it got to the extra heavy, fatiguing bottom of the stroke.
After that, I now really like them. Still not my favorite feel - they still have a heavy spring feel to them that isn't as crisp as I like, but they're tactile, punchy, and accurate, and my hands don't get fatigued as they once did.
Interestingly, I later got two Poker 3s, both with clears and the heavy aluminum case. Wow, these clears feel different. In one board, they feel tactile, but much lighter and less springy feeling than those in the V60. Much closer to the "more tactile brown switch" that they often are described as. On this one I could type happily and fatigue free even without O rings.
The clears on my second Poker 3 falls somewhere in between the overly springy and heavy feel of the V60 and tactile and light feel of those in my other Poker 3.
I wonder if the heavy aluminum case may have some bearing on the better feel of clears in the Poker 3. If so, clears should be great in the DAS, as it's a solid, heavy tank of a board.
USB 2.0 is for the millions of mice that are available. Hence I don't get why you need to have USB 3.0 on a keyboard because there is NOT a single mouse made anywhere that is able to use it?