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
This is Robert(Polysculpture) from Clackeys.com. I am posting to gauge interest in a Big Willie Artisan run. He would fit onto the Big Switch by Novel Keys. I was able to reach out to an awesome manufacturer that I have worked with in the past and they would be able to produce something like this for us for a fairly competitive price. This would be a resin cast, so it can come in some different colors and possibly even painted!
Below are some prototype pictures that I took of my One Eyed Willie. Keep in mind this is a prototype and a 4x scale up of the original design that was never intended to be larger. I would actually be re-working this design a little to have more details at this large scale. It would also be printed on an even better printer so things would look about 2x as detailed and be cleaner.
So a couple things I am curious about is what color(s) would you guys want the cast to be? Big White Willie, Big Black Willie, Big Grey Willie, Big Clear Willie, ect. Also, would you want a hand painted option for an additional $30-$50?
Rough quote for getting your fingers on a Big Willie is in the range of $25-$40 for standard resin cast and +$35-$50 to that for it to be hand painted. Each Willie would also come with quality packaging. The last thing we need is a bunch of damaged Willies.
-Robert