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
PBT and backlighting compatible, probably as good as it will get for caps that support backlighting for now. GMK is working on compatible keycaps though, they teased some on their Instagram account for the new low-profile Cherry-switches.
You are wrong in your last sentence though, these are not laser-etched caps, they are double-shot. Laser is just the name of the keyset, all GMK caps consist of two different pieces of plastic, one for the cap itself and one for the legend.
I can't really tell you why there are not that many "designs" that feature backligh-compatible keycaps other than that the demand is probably not high enough and people are content with what's being offered at the moment.
I don't see how white makes a keycap set low quality, just because you don't like the color.