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
TL;DR: The keyboard seems to report at 125Hz-200Hz at 6KRO mode, or 1000Hz at NKRO mode. The CTRL starts up at 6KRO mode by default for Mac compatibility, so make sure it's at NKRO if you're on Windows. (I use this key rollover test -- http://gadzikowski.com/nkeyrollover.html -- and mash-hold 8+ keys)
One going theory for a lower polling rate is debounce prevention, where the keyboard tries to prevent a switch occasionally rattling on the contacts from counting as multiple presses. I switched it off and didn't see a difference in polling rate that couldn't be explained by NKRO. (see below) It might actually mean added lag for up to the set debounce time (in this case 5 cycles = ~5-6ms), but I have no reason to believe "gaming" keyboards don't do debouncing as well.
I then played with 6KRO (6-key rollover) & NKRO (n-key rollover) and noticed that 6KRO caps out at around ~140-170Hz -- similar to what DarkMio said re: Mac and 6KRO -- but NKRO reaches several hundred Hz. If I tweak my (horrible) way of testing to 4 numpad directions "at once" 6KRO stays around that range but NKRO regularly hovers around 600-1000Hz, matching what you'd see on gaming keyboards with this method. (reported 800-1000Hz)
Take this with a grain of salt, but this seems to match up with other people's tests of 125Hz and 1000Hz keyboards. (See here: https://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=61607.msg1431368#msg1431368 )
This should give stable results.