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
Just received mine a week or two ago. Got mine with Matias quiet click switches, no backlighting and the front printed retro styled keycaps. This keyyyboard is fantastic except for a few glaring problems. As you can probablyy already see, there is some keyy chatter. I'm leaving in those Y's to demonstrate how annoying it is to deal with.
The board itself is a dream to tyype on. Veryy quiet, around the same volume as rubber dome that myyy office mate uses. The key feel has some excellent tactility and a springy-ness that makes tyyping veryyy enjoyable. I got the front printed retro styled keycaps and they're alright. Nothing special. The Dye-sub is not super crisp, and there are minor changes in the bold-ness of different prints. Hard to notice unless you're reallyy paying attention however. Functionality is pretty much as described. Media keys are nice and the build quality is solid. The cable is a braided one, and is actually quite smooth compared to some other cables I've used. All in all, pretty solid keyboard.
Except for the key chatter. Holy shit is it annoying. The Yy key is misbehaving pretty seriously, as is the backspace, sometimes registering up to five. This is right out of the box. The chatter does not seem to be getting any better with daily use, onlyy more keys seem to be getting involved. A quick browse through some other reports indicate that this is not an un-common problem. Myy recommendation: get the keyboard if it suites yyour needs, but stayy the hell awayy from the quiet click switches. This is really a shame too because they are extremelyy tactile, veryyyy quiet and generally exceptional to tyype on, but the key chatter makes it a non-starter in my book. If you're handy there are some guides on how to fix them (seems to be a little excess grease in a lot of cases - check out Chyyros' alps cleaning/resto vid on youtube) but others have noted that this exercise can turn into yyeyarly maintenance. Not worth it IMO.
I am returning this keyboard for a refund from Massdrop. No warranty from KBParadise is lame.