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
A special limited edition Realforce 87UB Silent with 30g domes. They've released a few ANSI 104 boards but nothing 87 ANSI. This board would counter the compact 35g Plum boards that have popped up. They already make 30g NIS boards in Japan so they already have the formulas/domes.
A full size 104 55g board. Realforce already has two SKU's for this so I don't know what the hold up is. The only unsubstantiated theory I have is Elite Keyboards has some sort of deathlock or contract on the 55g domes themselves. My guess is Topre has a huge MOQ on these that EK won't buy into but at the same time EK won't give permission for anyone to use the 55g domes in any keyboard but theirs. Stalemate and the consumer loses. Topre needs to figure it out because the clones are getting closer by the year; In Korea you can now buy 62g EC models for example.
Also, I would like to see more options for Devlin Q-Series low profile caps. The sticking point is they do not have the molds for 6.25" space bars. Mechsupply used SP DSA for that but I think an even better option would be Devlin L-Series which is currently used on the Cherry G80-3850 models.
Speaking of low profile, I would love to purchase a board using Kailh's new low profile ML clone switches.
Also I would like to see a group buy for Cherry MX Silent Red switches.
I think that's it :)