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
Installed them on a GMMK with SA 1965 and I'm a pretty big fan. They were a little mushy at first, but they have loosened up. SA keycaps + QMX clips only silence the upstroke, which was the problem with the GMMK. The metal construction made it very loud on the upstroke, and these clips fixed that perfectly. I'll have to get these for every board I own.
I tried these on a couple keys where I had also installed o-rings, but the travel distance was shortened too much and it felt bad.