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
I have the Mac version and it's easy to swap back and forth to Windows modes by removing the right COMMAND keycap and changing the DIP switches there. You can also set the L or R space bar to be backspace.
After a few months, I'm still not on "autopilot" for the non-standard "home/end/pgup/pgdn" cluster, and I never use the undo/cut/copy/paste cluster either. I do kinda wish they had a second "6" on the left hand as that's what I was used to from my previous Microsoft Natural keyboard, but that's a minor niggle for me. The ALPS-clone switches are hard to find alternative keycaps for.
The biggest reason why I wanted this keyboard over other ergonomic mechanical ones, is that the overall arrangement is the most like a standard keyboard, but still has the comfort split. I tried a Kinesis Advantage for a week at work, and while I could definitely see becoming adept with it in the long term, when I'm away from my office desk, I use a laptop and wouldn't want to have to spend the mental energy to remember to not use the extra thumb keys. (same with ErgoDox.)