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
1: The feel of the keys while typing is great. They are very smooth to the touch, and aren't as loud as my OEM keys (which I had o-rings on as dampeners).
2. The size of the keys are nice, but it would have been even nicer if some of the larger keys, like enter, shift, and backspace, were just a little longer.
2. The space bar doesn't fit! I am disappointed that there's one key (the biggest key!) that doesn't match all the others on my keyboard now.
3. The plastic covering the top of the keys is also a disappointment. It is dull, and the fine scratches on the surface of the plastic is very visible.
4. I was kind of surprised that the printing of the letters and characters seemed printed poorly. I expected the typeface to be crisp and clear; instead, it's fuzzy around the edges and there are very visible blemishes printed on some of the keys. I thought maybe the plastic might be making the typeface appear out of focus, so I disassembled one of the keys and found that it wasn't the plastic, it was just a poorly printed sticker.
In summary, I really expected to be blown away by these keys. While I do like them, there are some important areas in which they could be improved.
Me:
so I like the feel of the Datamancer keys, the spacebar will be interesting as it appears they 3D printed the base, but overall I'm rather disappointed with the look of the lettering, it is a "classic" script, but it looks like they printed it on a dang dot matrix printer or a low end inkjet, rather than giving it a "retro" feel, it makes it more "cheap", so I may end up redoing the labels (its just paper after all) and try to get some higher quality stock/parchment and get some LEGIT old school feel