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
MD had faith in a product and invested tens of thousands into the development. If you look at how MD operates this makes perfect sense.
Had IC wanted to make any of their items on their own, Kickstarter would have really been the best option. People constantly complain about delays with MD, but Kickstarter delays are far worse (see what happened to the keyboardio, one of the best keyboards ever). Getting funds during a presale, knowing how to budget for prototypes and still have enough to fulfill all orders is super tough.
In this case, MD fronted the money and took on the risk to have products created. The money almost always owns the product. It's like shark tank if you've seen that. Nobody just pays all of the upstart cost and hands you a product free and clear, there are always expectations and rules to follow. That isn't how business works.
And I'm no legal expert either. Common sense assumptions based on standard business practices would lean to pointing that MD is in the right here is all I'm really getting at.