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
1u represents the size of a regular keycap like F or J. A reminder that both rows are Row 4 height (referred to as Row 1 for WASD profile, Row B for Cherry profile):
SECOND LAST ROW: Right shift is 2u (standard is 2.25u). You can replace it with the 0/Ins key from a full 104/108 keyboard set (bottom row of the numberpad) which is also 2u, and the correct row height to boot. Followed by 13x1u. BOTTOM ROW: 3x standard 1.25u, spacebar is standard 6.25u, then 5x1u
So you will need a 2u for the right shift and 4 extra 1u keycaps for left Shift, PN, FN and left Ctrl (disregarding arrow keys which are standard in full-size keycap sets), all of Row 4 height, to complete the board.
(I apologise if this is too long or too much to mull over just before the end of the drop, but I wanted it to be fairly exhaustive :D)