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
There definitely isn't much there, two different enter keys for two different layouts means at least 2 of them will most likely not be used ever, same goes for the numpad enter, but honestly this set has so much going for it and is so revolutionary in its modularity that I think something had to give. I love the novelties that do exist but it'll be hard to justify the cost.
Most (almost all) GMK sets offer little to no novelties at all - Plum for example had none (except like 1 or 2 plum keys that were added as a little bonus/thank you from the designer and Massdrop), GMK carbon had none to start with and then dropped a bunch of them at a later point.
Honeywell, Stormtrooper, Cyan, Penumbra, Sky Dolch, Skeletor, Keyboard & Co, Hyperfuse, the 2 new Miami sets - none of these have a single novelty key at all.
I would definitely have gone in for some space-based iconography, though. That's weirdly missing from an otherwise wonderful set.
Then again, this is 2017 and of course someone's going to be offended by and stand against something no matter what it is, meat, men, feminists, homosexuals, homophones, Trump, Macron, themed novelty plastic key caps that you put on your keyboard, etc.
If you only see the bad in the theme rather than acknowledging what they did and what they made possible then that's highly disappointing. That stance does nothing but bring misery to the world.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CbIZU8cQWXc&t=1s
The trans-continental railroad in North America was a wonderful achievement. It was also largely built by Chinese working what amounts to virtual slave labor. All the while, their work was protected by Sherman as he slaughtered Native men, women, and children.
I wouldn't want any symbol of Sherman's on my desk, either. Not even as a novelty. The South did some incredible things, too. But I'm not going to put a confederate flag on my desk.
Anyway, to be honest it really does seem like you're the one who's taken offense.
My argument has nothing to do with supporting ideologies that are obviously controversial, I'm not defending them either, my opinion of communism is irrelevant here.
What about my post has led you to believe I'm offended by anything? I just think it is disappointing and saddening that people are so narrow minded - this happened before on Geekhack, a Chinese community member posted some work he's been doing on artisan boxes (for display) and he had a collection of Nazi themed keycaps; the images were promptly removed by moderators because people were upset and offended. Isn't that ridiculous? People can take interest in things without supporting them, it's not wrong of them to do it.
US space program foundations were laid by Werner von Braun and his V2 missile from WWII - does this make swastika appropriate for eg. NASA keycap theme?
I don't know what point you're trying to make; you wouldn't put swastika novelties in a yoga themed set. The hammer and sickle carries a lot more weight than just as a symbol of space exploration, and there are any number of different icons that would have been more interesting and relevant, which could easily have been used instead.
I have no interest in getting in a long winded debate with you, nor in "bringing misery to the world." My point is that a whole lot of misery was created under that symbol, and to forget that would be a tragedy.
Firstly the hammer & sickle was mentioned by @breakerjump firstly; that kit is called "glorious", not novelties. The novelties, which were what this discussion was about from the get go, are Gagarin's CCCP helmet and what I assume to be representative of the Red Star (I'm not the designer so I don't want to speak for anyone but myself). I wasn't relating the hammer and sickle to anything with space exploration, I was speaking of the overall theme of the set.
Lots of things are associated with grief, misery and mass murdering occupation. I understand one's moral standpoint if they rather not be associated with it, my qualm is solely the fact that it was instantly classified as such; land of the free and all, freedom of speech, but what is the point of coming on here and saying "lol nice keys supporting of mass murdering regimes"? What is that going to accomplish? If this hadn't been brought up I'd have stayed out of the subject.
The point was that I think basically branding anyone who buys the novelties as supporting of mass murder is a little bit on the crazy side. That wasn't what was said but people read between the lines, what was implied is obvious. Those people that associate these symbols with grief and hardship don't need people to fight for them on the internet, I'm sure they appreciate your stand outside of a plastic key cap buy.
Edit: @t0rk I agree that it hasn't got much (if anything) to do with space exploration. I was talking about the actual novelties, not the glorious kit. I still stand by what I said but I completely agree that there would've been more relevant novelties to be made. I'd rather not question T0mb3ry's choice to include them, if he felt they fit that's his vision, if people like them they'll buy them, if they don't, they won't.
I realise Massdrop is not exactly the place to be discussing stuff like this but so long as everything is civil I don't think there's any reason to be wary of where this went or may be going.
The Great Famine was a disgusting tragedy. The Cultural Revolution was a disgusting tragedy. The Khmer Rouge was a disgusting travesty. The fact that Marxist political thought has been used to justify atrocities does not mean that atrocities are endemic to Marxist political action. Communism as a theoretical mode of production (in which the workers own the means of production) need not be blamed for communism as a political ideology that gives absolute power over everything, including life and death, to the government.
In fact, Socialist and Communist labor organizing efforts in the 19th- and early 20th-century United States are a major part of the reforms (child labor laws, the 40-hour work week) that changed capitalism from an obviously horrible mode of production (Marx's Capital vol. 1 is a great place to go for lots (and lots) of quantitative and qualitative data describing this) into one that seems like natural and inevitable. I'm also thinking of resistance to fascism in Italy, Spain, and South America. Furthermore, it stands to reason that multiple countries would forbid propagation of communism, because communism as I understand it would imply the dissolution of the nation-state as the dominant form of social organization.
I don't mean to discount your feelings about this. I know there many people from former Soviet Bloc countries who have memories they would like to forget. Is full communism impossible in the currently-existing state of affairs? Yes, definitely. But I believe it is something to strive for.
(Specifically, for anyone still reading, I advocate some version of the "solar communism" outlined by David Schwartzmann in a 1996 article in the journal Science & Society:
https://www.jstor.org/stable/40403574?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents
Paywalled, but I'll happily share a PDF with anyone interested.)
http://www.chronicle.com/article/SlaveryCapitalism/150787
As to your parting shot, bless my stars! Turns out I'm a bundle of contradictions just like everyone else. I do not buy either of your attempts to dismiss my argument.
I was going to ask some followup questions, but honestly, I really don't care what you have to say and as Han Solo would put it, "... boring conversation anway."
Thanks @fropones for sparking some good discussion (maybe unintentionally), which is what I think is needed around here. :)
It has gone from "feel my pain", to "feel the pain of my ancestors before me", ultimately culminating in what now is "feel the pain of the ancestors of others whom I thoroughly read about on wikipedia". Historical accuracy and reminders of times past are only allowed if it were high times, not if they were (generally) low.
Everyone wants to speak out for those who suffered (and still do) unspeakable horrors, the standard "1 like = 1 prayer" mentality even though there is absolutely no need to broadcast how they feel about a particular event in time. There seems to be no discernible line drawn by some between saying something the novelties here are mass murder themed and advocating human rights when/where it actually matters. There's a time for everything, this was definitely not it.