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
I thought I'd point out two things regarding this drop.
1) It has NO WARRANTY. I contacted support regarding the K-type just recently and they informed me that it had no warranty, and that "that would have been noted on the product page." Turns out it WASN'T noted on the product page... the product page simply has no mention of a warranty existing. I took that to mean it came with a standard Massdrop one year warranty. Well, I guess I should have guessed better. This product also has no mention of a warranty, so I can only assume that it has no warranty, either. I sure hope Massdrop has several orders of magnitude better manufacturing capabilities than every single other company on the planet!
2) The question I posed to support for the K-type actually wasn't even for warranty service. I managed to lose the 8 case screws for my K-type, and I wanted to purchase replacement screws. I figured that any company that manufactures anything at all also orders an extra 5~10% extra parts in case of manufacturing issues or to provide warranty service should any customers have issues down the road. Well, I guess if your warranty service amounts to nothing more than the 30 day (assuming an industry-standard number, but given their warranty period I would make absolutely sure before buying anything here!) return policy, you don't need any extra parts. Even if 10% of the units turned out to have defective parts, they were just going to refund the money and wash their hands of it.
I also sorta figured that because Massdrop has basically copied the CTRL directly from the K-type's open source files, they could do me a solid, order an extra set of screws, and bill me the cost plus whatever profit they would like. Sadly, support isn't even going to check whether the screws match because my future business isn't worth the bother.
TL;DR: If you buy the CTRL Keyboard, don't use it. It has no warranty, and even if it did they won't be able to fix it should anything happen. If you ever need a replacement part for it in the future, you will just have to make it yourself. And if they do, indeed, use the same screws as the K-type, you are stuck with eight custom-machined screws that cannot be purchased anywhere on the planet... not even from the company that made them.
I'm sorry to hear about what happened with your keyboard. I also wanted to clarify a few things with you -
1) The K-Type does ship with a 1 year warranty. All Massdrop Made products ship with at least a standard 1 year warranty. We didn't have that posted in our page, but I'll speak to the team and get that added.
2) With replacement parts - we haven't received any requests for replacements for all the screws + stabilizers in the K-Type before yours. I want to make sure you are taken care of though and will work with our support team to get some replacements your way.
TL:DR: The CTRL is covered with a 1 year warranty much like the K-Type. I apologize for the incorrect information that was communciated. We'll work with the support team to help you out!
Thanks for clearing that up and sorry for communicating incorrect information to the community. I really thought that this was the case, but having support tell me otherwise kinda forced me to warn the community if it was in fact true. I'm glad you have set everyone straight on what to expect, and hopefully this will prevent future misunderstandings.