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
Pros: 1. LEDs look pretty sweet. The acrylic diffuser is a bit better at evenly distributing the light than the K-Type.
2. Halo Clear switches make me regret getting Halo Trues before. Feels like I'm typing on a quiet typewriter, and it's delightful.
3. Stabilizers are really nice - clearly lessons learned from the K-Type.
Gripes: 1. The feet were probably good in theory. In practice, they're infuriating. Aesthetically they're great, but heaven forbid I should want to scoot my computer more than half a centimeter in any direction without lifting it. One of them will always fall off if I try - I'm seriously considering glue.
2. I thought it was bricked when it came - immediately plugged it into a few computers, and it wouldn't register any keystrokes. The LEDs would flash two or three times, and then it would disconnect... re-flashing it worked, but it was a nightmare to get it to flash properly with a new layout. I haven't tried the configurator yet - it wasn't out when I'd gotten the board.
3. I feel like the color wasn't what I was promised - I bought this mostly because it looked like a black version of the K-Type. It's darker, and the color is definitely nice, but it's not what I had in mind when I bought it. I do like the space gray, but I would have LOVED it closer to black instead.
All in all - it's not bad. It feels nice and solid (aside from the feet), and it's a good keyboard. Not sure that I would buy it again.