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
ISO is something that's internationally used. I'd have loved for this drop to offer it.
"ISO keyboards are used by many European countries, and with ..." taken from: http://deskthority.net/wiki/ANSI_vs_ISO
"Internationally" means Europe and Canadian-French: http://deskthority.net/wiki/Region-specific_layouts
Please upvote this post if you agree that the Canadian-French layout is the meanest and most hideous idea anyone ever had. Can you fill a keyboard with a Granite Base+Mods+Iso+International set ?
Where in Canadia to you stay ? I've got an aupair from Vancouver and she's going home for christmas in early Dec. Maybe she can smuggle a Poker for you ?
French-Canadian ANSI is a sad thing in my experience – I don't believe it's the official layout of any French-speaking place.
French-Canadian ISO, however is the standard where I live (Québec). For example, all Apple computers sold in the province ship with this layout. Just like most other languages where ISO is preferred, having accented characters on the primary layer is important for writing.
Here's how it looks, if you're curious:
As for the question about Granite & other sets, most sets will fit fine* because our number row is standard, which seems to be the exception. Keysets like Quartz get it right – there is an ISO enter and a short shift included in the base set, along with a "spare" key to use on the missing 1u. The International set then contains all necessary alpha keys (^, Ç, È, À, Ù, É) should you want to complete. I'm really grateful for that.
* As long as you don't mind one or two blanks. Granite is crazy expensive to have in ISO, mostly due to how the sets are divided – you basically pay 40$ for two keys. I get why it's done so, but it's not particularly interesting, which perpetuates the idea that people only buy ANSI.
If they do ever offer a drop for poker with ISO layouts I'll be buying another one for myself.