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 had the pleasure of working very closely with Melissa during the initial creation of Jukebox SA, and must say I was immediately surprised at the level of personal attention that I received in the numerous emails that were exchanged during the process. Initially I had assumed that Signature Plastics was a massive organization based somewhere overseas, and that I had just gotten lucky with my customer support contact. Little did I know that I was actually working with a small family business based within the US.
With the enthusiast keyboard community growing at such an exponential rate, I thought it would be great to get the general public and enthusiast community a bit of a glimpse inside of a company that really goes out of their way to provide great products for us.
1. How long has Signature Plastics been in business?
2. How long have the profiles we all know and love (SA, DSA, DCS) been in production?
3. Tell us a little about Signature Plastics.
4. Have you ever produced other profile keycaps or have plans for any new profiles in the future?
5. What is your personal keyboard, and what keycaps do you have on it?
6. Let's say you just got a big order for a new keycap set from Massdrop. This includes a few custom novelties, sculpted profile double shots. What is the process like for you guys from the time you receive the order to when you ship them out?
7. Do you ever see an order for a set come through that you really must have for yourself?
8. Ever since Massdrop started running sets you produce on a somewhat regular basis, how has business changed for you, it at all?
9. A lot has changed in the past few years for you. I know you've added the G20 profile and very recently ICE Caps (PBT SA Caps), along with completely revamping the PimpMyKeyboard.com website and group buy/interest check systems. Is there anything else you have planned for the future?
EDIT 10/15/16 - Response from Bob of Signature Plastics After asking a few more questions I received this information from Bob of Signature Plastics in regards to some of the quality issues that have happened in the past and what some of their other clients are:
Thanks Bob for taking the time to reply to us!
Thanks to Melissa and Bob at SP for taking the time to answer all of my questions, and thanks to the MD team (Kunal, Alex, Yanbo) for supporting the mechanical keyboard community as much as they do! Also thanks to all the people active of the discussions here, this has been such a great positive place to hang out right out of the gate!