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
Sorry for long story, but it was a fun experiment. engtaobao.com acts as a translation/filter/user-account for taobao international orders, and does a pretty good job, although the product descriptions are still mostly in Chinese, making it hard to find things. After lots of random searching and google translating back & forth, I found the front/"side"-printed keycap set and purchased 2. My bank called within minutes warning me that my account was being used in Shanghai. I asked them to unblock the transaction because it was indeed me ordering something. Once purchased, I translated the order details and it said "Out of Stock...Do Not Shoot!!" which I assume means do not order. It was too late since I had already paid. I logged in each day to see if the order was canceled and if I could get my money back, but it acted like nothing was wrong and was delivered in about 3 weeks. Strange bonus is that they were PBT instead of ABS as it stated in the product description. Shipping was ~$30 I think, which is fairly steep but worth it for something I couldn't find anywhere else.
I would hope massdrop customer support helps you out. I got in touch with them because one LED died on my varmilo va68, and they asked me if I would rather have 5 dollars or if I wanted to return the board, as the manufacturer didn't have extra single LEDs. I basically wrote the whole thing off and didnt answer the email, it wasn't worth the effort to me.
Interesting thing is that when my last varmilo drop arrived, I also received an entirely new va68 in addition to the two va87s I had ordered... Thanks massdrop! <3