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
- the K2 has an 84 key AKA "75%" layout with no gaps between clusters of keys whereas the CTRL Hi-Pro is "Tenkeyless", in other words using the standard layout minus numeric keypad popularized with the IBM Model M SSK
- the K2 lacks hot swappable switches
- the CTRL Hi-Pro lacks bluetooth capability
- the CTRL Hi-Pro is more than double the weight of the aluminum K2
- the CTRL Hi-Pro is available in gray
- the CTRL Hi-Pro has more switch options available from the factory
If you wanted to claim that this is a clone of something, you could do a better job. There are many aluminum high-profile tenkeyless keyboards, especially expensive ones. To name some examples: