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
I'll be updating the kits over the next few months, mostly to incorporate last-minute changes and lessons learned from Round 1. In the meantime I've heard several requests to run Round 2 in a fully sculpted profile. This is one of the ideas I said I would consider for the future so I'm putting it to a community vote. Oblotzky was kind enough to create some renders to help us decide -- thank you, Oblotzky!
When you're ready, here's the Google survey to collect your responses:
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdKpjp_NrZZijBdUSvdocqffqD4MQL8UAVB23oCaPnmS6kSwg/viewform
I'll leave this poll open for a month or so. Please only vote once.
Feel free to discuss your preferences here, and watch this Talk thread for more updates as we move through Spring and Summer. See you in the Danger Zone!