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
One of the (many) problems with ISO is that you need like 30 or 40 keyset options to cover them all and that raises prices significantly.
Also, if you include options for one country, but dare to leave out another, everyone gets mad. Including blank keys will make everyone unhappy (so it's a good compromise), but most of the other keys are incorrect.
I urge all ISO users to switch to a different layout or use blanks exclusively.
Don't be ignorant to other peoples' needs just because you get what you want.
But It is very sad, we can't get ISO layout It's extremely difficult to get enthusiast keyboard parts in Europe.
You end up with a case where you have 40 different ISO kits for every country and each one has 5-10 orders (at best). Even if Europe had a much larger enthusiast market than the US its still hard to make work. That's why I recommended getting some blanks. The reason I urged all ISO users to switch to a new layout isn't because ANSI is better, I urge everyone to switch to a new layout. Matrix KBs are way better than staggared ones.
Look I've used ISO a lot, I typed on an ISO KB exclusively for over a year, I do prefer ANSI but the prevalence of so many unique options make it really hard to support for a GB, and if you want to participate in many GBs you have three options: 1. try to go beyond all the problems and get ISO support (which would be great but sadly won't work for many) 2. learn to use blanks 3. switch to ANSI.
I'm aware the Scandinavian market aren't very large(though extremely large if counting percentage of people living here that are enthusiasts), but I also know ISO aren't so small a marked. Even if it just came with the extra caps, I would be happy :o)
I know you said, it was possible to get the few caps as one-offs, but that isn't true - Especially if it's in a special colour or if it's double shot like these are. And in my case I want it for my modifier keys. So it wouldn't even be a problem to have it with American layout as long as I could get the right caps :oP