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
And yea I agree with that statement about the faceplate, it makes any keyboard feel and sound better. Also, switches I am using are Outemu blues.
While you can compare different cherry switches to each other, I'm a gateron fan if I must go there; it's just not fair to compare them to proper switches as they are in a different league. It's like comparing the pleasure you get from driving a Toyota Corolla to an E-type Jag; yes, you can fit more shopping in it, yes, it's cheaper and it fits more people - but seriously, it's not a fair comparison. Cherries are linear switches that had tactility and click kludged onto them to compete with the predominant Alps designs of the time; they survived the mech switch holocaust of the 90s, because they were cheap enough to produce, they could compete with membranes on cost while offering a significantly better experience than them. But, there are few other mechanical designs that don't wipe the floor with them.
The unicomp might not be as nice as some early model Ms, it's still much much better than cherry switches; you get 90% of the model M experience with N key rollover plus USB compatibility straight out of the box - no need to get a socket set and soldering iron to make it work.
If you are into keyboards, you should at least experience the model M for a while, it's the baseline that all others refrence from.
PS - you can get very nice APL keycap set from unicomps website.
Here's my Unicomp. It's my backup. My favorite keyboard ever was a Matias with white ALPS switches. But I still had to change out the keycaps for a better bottom-out. The thing is, I've gone through two of them already. The big keys failed and I couldn't find anyone to repair them. The thing about fingers sliding: I prop my keyboard at a high angle so I'm not connecting squarely with the keys. The smoother the keys, the less accurate -- for me.