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
There are many styles of space bar, but there is no difference between space bars that use costar stabs and cherry stabs. For costar stabs, you need to remove the white plastic tab under the existing keycap and move it over to the new keycap. This video doesn't show him actually transferring the plastic tab, but you can see the tabs very clearly in the video.
Now, having said that, there's a plethora of space bar configurations. The most common, a 6.25U wide space bar with 3 stems. There's a center stem, and one each 50mm to either side of it. This space bar will fit that, but it also has 3 other stems for greater compatibility. There's the center stem, one stem 12.5mm off to the right, and to either sides, one stem 40mm from the center, and one stem 50mm from the center.