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
Please refer to the link below for a multitude of renders and combinations featuring the kits:
* http://mitormk.com/pulse
And for those who are curious, this is what the backlit compatible Novelties look like:
Hope you guys enjoy what's coming, let me know what you think!
I just wanted to check in and see what you think here as it will influence my purchase decision.
Thanks!
Gotta break characters in the middle and the final result is lame.
I always assumed this to be due to the height of the profile - the lighting may not shine though completely, or may look dimly/partially lit, especially on sculpted SA with different row heights.
The stylistic choice could be another reason - for instance, the legends on Pulse are centered on the key cap, while LEDs are usually top aligned - OEM profile caps that do shine through legends typically top align their legends so that illumination is more uniform, but this might not look just as nice on an SA cap. It could also be that SP has some limitations ? Other ideas anyone ?
Sure, this works wonders. Because that's a, let's say, Razer Blackwidow. What if the customer has a Cooler Master Quickfire RGB? His LED's will be positioned at another direction. You can't design backlit keycaps that can be sold as universal kits and expect them to look good on all different keyboards.
GMK has been doing quite a bunch of homework regarding this, though. But it comes with lots of challenges, stability of the stem, durability of the keycaps, materials used, etc. Trust me, there are guys doing college Masters regarding this topic (materials).
At the end of the day, there is a heck ton of work and technology involded behind this and the reward is marginal.