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
Stepped caps lock has the stem in the center, it's not offset to the left of the key. I only have SA sets aside from this XDA set, but all of the stepped caps locks in my other sets are all aligned to the left of the key. I'm going to have to disassemble, de-solder and re-solder my left-aligned capslock switch if I want to use the stepped caps (which I do) ..... but .....
The real kicker is that with the stem centered, there's not even enough room for the cap to be pushed down ... the step hits the switch. Bummer.
And now I know for next time!