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
After removing a surface mounted resistor from the trackpoint module to disable the push-to-click functionality everything has been working pretty well. (See one of my earlier comments for a picture of the component I removed) The sensitivity on OSX is still poorly tuned and I haven't been able to get it to my liking yet (USB Overdrive doesn't offer enough customization of the acceleration curve) but it is usable.
I got the cherry mx blue switches, and typing on these is wonderful. My backtick/escape key did stop functioning a few days after the keyboard arrived, but I just reset the solder of the switch and the surface mounted resistor next to it and it started working again. The keyboard is easy to disassemble and service, which is a nice change from most consumer electronics.
Yeah, their quality control probably could have been a bit better, but when you buy from a small electronics shop you're bound to have some trouble. And if you're enthusiastic enough to buy this keyboard, then a couple solderings is not a big deal.
I would still have bought the keyboard, despite the difficulties I have had. I do wish it had dedicated arrow keys, though. If they make another model with arrow keys I'll buy that one, too.
I would also buy a model with arrow keys. This is easily the best keyboard I have ever used, but sometimes I miss the arrow keys (especially when using programs without a "vi-mode").