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
Keyboard came in a nice box, but without a user manual, which was found on their website in PDF form anyways.
As a whole: I've had a Pok3r in the past set up with Cherry MX reds (recently gifted to my grandfather), so I knew that I'd be getting something good, but the backlighting very much surprised me. It's incredibly bright! It actually hurt my eyes once I'd gotten it to light up, but luckily the brightness is variable. Speaking of the backlighting, there are a few different modes (Off, on, pulse, etc.), and the one I thought was cool is the "ghost" function. Basically, it just illuminates the key you've just hit, and slowly dims after awhile.
Keycaps: I saw the email about the doubleshots being sent instead, but I really paid no mind. On the full brightness setting, you will see some "fade" near the clear bits on the caps, but this was on full brightness of a white keycap set. Again, not enough to bother me, but still noticeable. However, these keycaps don't include the side printed shortcuts, so figuring out which key does what while holding function is annoying. Hoping to find a weird, niche set of keycaps to fix this purpose, but the shortcuts are the same as previous releases of pok3rs. Aside from this, they do feel very nice.
Case: Feels very sturdy, definitely no worries about damaging the thing on flights and road trips.
Overall, I do wish I'd gotten into the drop earlier to get the black, but the white doesn't bother me too much. Found that the Cherry MX Blues feel very nice, and I sort of wish I'd taken the plunge on them earlier (Everything else now feels squishy). I'm very satisfied with the purchase, and I'm hopeful to pick up another really soon.
Based off of where the original keys had the numbers printed, I think the original keycaps did illuminate the numbers, but with the doubleshots, the numbers are printed below where the LEDs are. In person, the numbers are sort of illuminated, but not to the degree of the other keys.
Here is a guide to programming your POK3R (and even rebinding PN/FN if you fancy that): https://www.reddit.com/r/MechanicalKeyboards/comments/35uy60/guide_howto_program_your_pok3r_programming_layers/