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
https://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=77576.0
However I believe that is the exception to the rule. Most commonly we see "R1" at the top (function row) and "R4" at the bottom (spacebar row). As one quick example, from the Nautilus drop:
So I think the safest assumption here would be to go with the common naming scheme and get one R2 and three R3, as Mudkipslaps mentioned.
Interesting side note, I was looking at my Realforce 87UB and noticed that the up arrow keycap is shaped the same as the caps in the Enter key row, even though it resides a row below in the Shift key row. So much minute attention to detail in Realforce boards.