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
It is an excellent travel size. When packing light, this fits much more easily into a laptop bag than a 60% in all dimension (length, width, keycap height).
Special chars and numbers take some getting used to, but people buying a 40% will know this going in. The layout documentation included in the Core doesn't match the actual keyboard, so I had to experiment to find the true layout. The keycaps top and side printing is already crammed with characters, so you'll have to memorize those not labeled. My model doesn't have ! and @ printed on any keycap, so I have to remember that they're Fn1+Shift+Caps and Fn1+Shift+A, respectively. Maybe they need to open up the right side of the keycaps for printing these extra chars?
The biggest drawback for me is no left Fn modifier and no DIP switch as in the POK3R to put an Fn on the Caps Lock. This makes the arrows mapping to IJKL useless. You either have to hit the Fn with your right thumb or move your left hand under your right. You can map Fn + WASD to the arrow keys however. There is an interesting mode to turn some right hand modifiers into arrows, but I use the right shift too much typing computer code to make this viable.
The version I have does not allow you to program the split space bar independently. For example, programming left space bar to Enter also programs the right space bar to Enter. I hope this will be fixed in a firmware update. The left space bar also doesn't have a stabilizer.
Finally, the cable is Micro USB.