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
Various reviews in China, including several that took the switches apart, showed that the switch is a virtual 1 to 1 clone of a Cherry switch, albeit with some parts "improved".
The switch is labelled either Zorro or Zoero, too small to read. In China it's either referred to as Z Switch, ZT Switch, 佐罗 (Zuoluo) Switch, or just Zorro Switch.
All the Chinese sources say this is manufactured by 鑫钻 XinZuan but no factory was ever named in full. However, given that this name is fairly unique, I was able to locate the company in Wenzhou, China. Its full name is
温州鑫钻精密轴有限公司 Wenzhou XinZuan Precision Switch Company
This company is unknown outside of China. It apparently however, was a pretty famous OEM, and believed to have previously made yellow Rapoo switches for Rapoo, another peripheral brand famous in China but virtually unknown outside of it. This seem to be their attempt to make their own brand like Kailh and Gateron did, but they are so low-key about it, they don't even seem to have their own website, in English or Chinese.
So I honestly have no idea who came up with the name HKL... Why not just called it Zorro Switch like everybody else?
Here's a Chinese review site taking apart a Z switch and comparing it to an authentic Cherry switch.
http://www.inwaishe.com/article-1953-1.html