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 has already been mentioned that having one large group with a maximum of 4 votes per person might be better than four groups with 1 vote per person. However, if Groups are better for any reason, it occurs to me that they should have been broken down by profile. I say this because I know a lot of people are very particular about their keycap profiles, so a really nice GMK set may never appeal to someone who prefers DSA, and vice versa. I think this would be more fair than a random breaking down of groups.
Also, perhaps in the future, it should be required to indicate cap and legend type - ABS/PBT, Double-Shot/Dye-Sub, etc. I didn't do this, myself, but would be good to know when voting on a keycap set.
Again, thanks for organizing this! So many great entries. Can't wait to see the finalists! =D