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
On the key caps: there is some cost associated with maintaining additional SKUs. It got to a point where it was easier to bundle the included caps than to offer a separate "no caps" SKU. I personally /hate/ ABS caps so the decision to include PBT caps was my own.
The upstroke was much louder on earlier versions of the board. This is an ongoing effort.
There have been a lot of problems reported with the bamboo case, including cracking. If you don't want to return your board, at least please share photos of the cracking to see what we can do.
For future revisions I'm considering ABS plastic and aluminum bodies. Those would alleviate nearly all of the concerns we've seen so far.
With regards to the caps: In that case I can completely understand the decision, I too prefer pbt to abs generally however I think the quality/thickness is the most important aspect. For example I would say that thick GMK ABS is superior to the thinner PBT of Tai Hao sets. I realise that this is down to opinion and either way many higher quality keysets alone cost more than the price of this entire board.
I totally get that it may take several attempts to try to dampen the upstroke as much as possible. I don't think it would even be fair to consider it a defect to be honest. I just think that many people that are interested in this hobby (myself included) like to have the upstroke as quiet as it can be. So thanks for your ongoing effort with this =].
Sure no problem, I would be open to returning my board, I just wasn't sure if this would be possible/ok with massdrop. I thought it may also be complicated by the fact I live in the UK and not the US? I realise I mistakenly said the left side previously when in actual fact it is located on the right side. I'll include some photos below (sorry for the poor quality):
I would absolutely be behind an ABS/Aluminium body. I'd personally love a CNC aluminium one however I'm sure that would need a significant price increase and may lose a lot of potential buyers. Not to mention it would create a lot more additional work for yourself! Again thank you very much for your response and I'm sorry that there have been some issues experienced that were out of your control.
If you want to explore a return please contact Massdrop support and include this thread in your request. Cheers.