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
This long-winded speech aside, what I'm getting at is I totally admire your desire to run a DCS set when the market is clearly much more in favor of SA and DSA sets right now. But perhaps because of your desire for this set to be a mix-and-match as-you-like-it sort of set, a non-sculpted profile of DSA or SA row 3 would be more accommodating. I know SA would be unlikely because you would like to use PBT, but that still leaves dye-sub DSA as a possibility.
DSA would be forgiving to the Dvorak/Colemak users, allow even more customization with the caps, and is much more sought-after than DCS sets right now. That said, please do attempt to get this set ran again regardless of how you might modify it because I really think it's worth making.
As another note, on the whole individual colors thing, I'm no expert at getting a keyset produced but for example, the current "color packs" is five different child deals each with their own MOQ. Wouldn't it make more sense to run two child deals like this? (picture linked at bottom of post) http://imgur.com/iHZ5NJ5
I also agree with @LeandreN that the Quartz set on PMK has great dividing of child deals (except $25 for extra homing keys, not really sure what that's all about).