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
The keyboards are very cool, no doubt. Great design. Nice and compact. But these Cherry switches - I'm having some issues.
First, the clears. OK, I don't think there's anything wrong with them. Just heavier than I expected. So no problems other than they are heavier than I prefer.
But the board I got with the Cherry blues is really concerning me. There's so much friction on the keystrokes, it surprised me. I was was expecting a nice, clean, smooth, fast, light, clicky feel. Instead, they feel like there's molasses on the shafts. Really frictiony and almost sticky feeling.
And interestingly, it gets worse if I hit the keys on the front edge or on one of the front corners. If I don't hit the key directly on top of the shaft, the force needed to activate the key increases by something like 50-75% than if I did. In this case, ir REALLY feels viscous and sticky, like thick molasses is on the shaft. That angled force is exacerbating the friction on the shaft. It's surprising how muc it feel like there's dried up, sticky sugare water or soda in there. You can imagine the misstrikes that I'm getting when I try use consistent finger pressure, and can't activate the keys that are at the periphery of where my hands rest.
This effect is bad on those keys I might strike at an angle, like "V" , "B" , "shift", etc. it's not not so bad on the keys right under my finger that I'm more likely to press directly down on. But still, even those keys feel very slow and frictiony.
Did I get a bad keyboard? Unless this somehow clears up, smooths itself out significantly, I don't see how I can use this board. It's just impossible to type when some of the keys unexpectedly call for 50-75% more force than others.
As a reference, one of my other main keyboards is a DAS Pro C with Greetech blues. Right out of the box, it was exactly what I expected blues to be - light, fast, smooth, consistent, and clicky. Light years better than what I'm experiencing here. Here, I'm feeling like there's something wrong.
Is this normal for Cherry blues? And if so, does it work itself out? I'm extremely frustrated and disappointed.
I'm giving it a week to see if it smooths out. If not, I may contact Massdrop to see about a return.
Thanks.
If you want, you can contact support via the transactions tab under your profile and have your keyboard send in for us to evaluate and see if there are anything wrong with it.