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
Pretty flexible on other attributes. I can adjust to most switches, though I do look longingly at the upcoming Wooting's Flaretechs and some of the other exotic non-contact tech out there. A big-*** enter key would be nice. I enjoy RGB when I have it, but don't need it. For the case (which should be a real case, not "floating key" nonsense), plastic is fine; adding a wood effect makes it a bit nicer, and making it out of actual, well-finished wood makes it really nice, though really just plastic is good enough. Keycaps aren't important, but it'd nice to have PBT dyesubs (for a non-backlit keybord) or shine-through doubleshots (for a backlit keyboard).
EDIT: Oh! And another cool feature which isn't really necessary, but would be nice to have: multi-pairing Bluetooth as a secondary interface on a primarily wireless keyboard. Basically I want a normal, wired keyboard (and I mean actually wired, not just charging through a wire while sending data wirelessly), except with the ability to just press a button and instantly send keystrokes to, say, my phone instead of my PC.