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Showing 1 of 1674 conversations about:
rydmike
22
May 24, 2020
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I was so happy to see that this fabulous keycap set has its international kit back, that is really wonderful I thought and I was about to place an order.
However, I noticed that it does not fully support Nordic (FI/SE/DK/NO) that I require. It claims that it does, but it does not. Based on the image several required keys are missing critical symbols. Mostly it is the ALT GR functionality that is not printed on the caps. The attached picture shows the gaps I could see at a brief glance. The comparison photo is from a TKL SA set with Nordic (FI/SE) layout. This is such a pity, I would have loved to place an order, but the international kit is just too lacking and I cannot use the caps in their current state.
NOTE: The comparison shown SA profile keycap set also has some minor flaws, most notably it is missing R4 [-_ ] key and the [% 5] key is missing € symbol and the [& 6] has a symbol that does not belong on Nordic keyboards. It is still much more complete than this set, it also comes with a [E] key with € on it if you want to use it, but I don't as it just looks ugly/asymmetrical with it.
matt3o
2752
matt3o
May 26, 2020
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rydmiketo increase compatibility we we do not support tertiary legends, it has always been like that since granite. Now if you think we are missing some keys (just the 2 main legends) please let me know ASAP!
(Edited)
rydmike
22
May 26, 2020
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matt3oThanks for the quick reply! :)
As far as I can see all the required caps are there at needed row profiles. However, the missing tertiary legends makes the set unusable. I suspect other potential customers might feel the same.
Such a pity, I would really have loved to order a base set of these fabulous key caps, plus the international kit and maybe some other kits too. Sadly the missing legends would just make them nonviable for any practical usage for me.
I understand that supporting the different required legends in all countries is challenging, but since you already have e.g. Japanese caps with both 3 and 4 legends printed on the same cap, and even a kit with caps that have side printed legends, it is clearly technically doable. Considering this, then leaving out very critical legends for countries in Europe seems a bit like a arbitrary marketing decision, well perhaps a production and complexity cost situation too, but still one that would be manageable.
Currently I am only aware of one high-profile key cap set on the market that are made of quality PBT with good quality dyesub printed legends, that have at least semi proper support for international caps with ISO layout. Yes, it is the SA key cap set pictured in the attached image, it has some issues (gaps) for some European countries too. It would have been nice with some more options on the market. I still have to say that this key cap set is the most exquisite one I have seen on the market so far, and they would probably be pure joy and love to type with.
Kind regards,
Mike from Finland.
(Edited)
matt3o
2752
matt3o
May 26, 2020
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rydmikeas an intl user myself I feel your pain. The rationale here is: better partial support than no support at all. The Japanese kit is more of an "otaku" kit appealing to a wider audience than a Finnish kit that is bought exclusively in Finland (same for the other EU countries). Full support for ALL countries would be quite a commitment, some layouts would probably sell well (nordic, german) while others would probably fail. This way we try to make all of you half happy, instead of few of you fully happy. Hope it makes sense.
rydmike
22
May 26, 2020
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matt3oHi again Matt (?),
I just want to add that I really do love this key cap set and fully appreciate the effort and care that has gone into to creating it! Really great job and so wonderful that you have revived and even improved on the IBM caps that inspired them.
Regarding all those pesky international key caps, yes I agree they are tricky and messy. A lot of the caps are however shared among several European countries. For example Sweden, Finland and Estonia have the exact same layout and they also share the tertiary legends on keys 7 8 9 0 with many other countries. But yes, it does end up being quite many different legend prints that has to go into an international key cap set. A common way of handling this, is putting them into country kit groups with as many caps as possible shared in the group, while still trying to minimize the amount of country group kits needed. This reduces the wasted, not need key caps for the end user and also keeps the cost of the kits a bit more reasonable by not including so many not needed caps. It does increase the research and design needed to put together such groups of country kits, although this is prior art, so there must be a template available for it somewhere.
This is a reasonable general guide https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QWERTY to the messy world of QWERTY/Z based layouts and key cap legends, but I'm sure you are aware of it already :)
Best regards,
Mike
matt3o
2752
matt3o
May 26, 2020
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rydmike
rydmike
22
May 26, 2020
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matt3oWow, those two kits look almost perfect!
(The first kit is at least missing the R4 combined hyphen and underscore key, maybe it was in some other kit)
Wish I could still get the first one. All black legends would have been cleaner imo and probably simpler printing wise too, but the blue tertiary prints would have been acceptable too. You don't happen one left over somewhere? hehe :D
I am aware that some keyboard enthusiasts in Europe use US ANSI layout, often simply because there are no, or very few options for enthusiasts otherwise. If you mostly game and don't write so much on such a keyboard in your local language, then it is doable.
I code and write a lot of business communication in Finnish and Swedish, so I really need those country keys to be where I'm used to them being. I could maybe adjust to use US ANSI layout for just coding, it would be a long and painful journey, but then I would still need to have another keyboard around to plugin for everything else and that just gets too tedious and messy.
rydmike
22
Jun 2, 2020
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GimbalHi @Gimbal, yes it is definitely a cleaner look, I certainly agree on that and sure I can remember where the tertiary keys are as well, most of the time anyway :D
The point was just that it is not possible to make an entirely correct/complete layout with the current international kit, probably not for any language and that this might not be what everybody was looking for in an international KIT. Difficult to say really, based on Matt's comments they sold very few of the international kits earlier, so I can certainly understand his reluctance to commit to producing them at all. In that sense I certainly commend and applaud that there actually is an international kit that works, as long as you are OK with not having any tertiary legends, for many keyboard enthusiast that is probably fine.
Many enthusiast have also just abandoned the ISO layout in favor of US ANSI. I saw there is layout guide called "Swerty" for setting up a Swedish keyboard layout on an US ANSI board, while retaining most of the US ANSI layout and caps otherwise, obviously you still need the ÅÄÖ caps and maybe a few other extras, looked pretty interesting actually.
It can certainly get busy with all the legends on Swedish keyboards, I don't disagree on that, but if you don't mix in Danish/Norweigan legends on the same caps (a lot of laptop keyboards do this nowadays, gosh is it busy!) it is more doable. For example, the photo I posted earlier (above) of a kit with a Swedish layout using PBT Dyesub SA profile keycaps, is a pretty good example of it not looking too busy and still quite clean too.
The blue tertiary prints on the earlier /DEV/TTY MT3 international kit was a bit of an odd choice in my opinion. If you already have different colors on the legend dyesub prints, why not go with some grey color for the tertiary legends instead then, just to make them less pronounced and keep the look cleaner? It was still interesting to see that it was doable and that tertiary legends are still in use on the Japanase KIT. I assume it is bit trickier to print them on these caps than on e.g. SA caps, due to the deeper more sculpted surface area on these caps.
As I also mentioned to Matt, I think this is a fabulous keycap set, pretty epic actually.
nederk
40
Oct 1, 2020
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rydmikeYou are allowed to your opinion and everyone has their preference, but your original post made it sound like the kit is functionally unusable (missing keys or that they are misplaced). This is not the case, there is absolutely nothing wrong with the kit and it is perfectly usable.
I'm a Nordic user myself, and considering how difficult it is to find proper International/NorDe sets out there, this here is superb. Profiles like MT3, SA, KAT, KAM, OSA and DSA are supposed to be cut & clean, without legend-clutter. And this set nails it, as well as other MT3 sets/kits.
Let's hope that Drop will provide tooling for International/NorDe kits for all the other MT3 sets out there. That is truly missed.
(Edited)
rydmike
22
Oct 5, 2020
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nederkHi @nerdek maybe the wording in the first post was a bit unclear. I only meant that it is incomplete in the sense that the Nordic set is missing all the tertiary legends required for a correct and complete Nordic ISO keyboard layout.
I don't even disagree with that it looks cleaner without them, but it is not a correct or complete layout, which was what I wanted to caution about. Perhaps the wording in the first post was a bit strong due to slight disappointment when I at first discovered this. That said, I also stated in later posts above that I could probably get used to it as well and that I commend and applaud @matt3o for making a Nordic set available at all, considering the low volume he has seen. This keycap set is still imo the most gorgeous one out there, so I certainly don't want to discourage anybody from getting one. Probably next time when I see a Drop, I will order a set too with the extra Nordic caps, despite the missing tertiary legends.
The pic of the SA keycap set with tertiary legends was there to show what legends are missing and that it is doable and can look reasonably clean too. Although the available surface space is a bit smaller on this profile, so maybe it is a bit more challenging. And yeah it certainly looks even cleaner without them, no argument about that.
And yes it is a bummer that it is so difficult to find caps for different national layouts. I recently order and got nice double shot ABS OEM profile Nordic set in addition the above featured SA set. Basically I just ordered it because it was pretty much the only one in addition to above SA set, that I had found that had a complete Nordic keycap set, so I just wanted to support the effort. It was actually nice and high quality set too, but of course OEM profile is a bit mundane, still it works well where I used it.
In addition to the keycaps, there is the constant challenge of PCBs not supporting ISO layout, so it is not easy to find working solutions. I certainly grok why many keyboard enthusiasts in Europe just switch and use US ANSI layout. For coding I think I could get used to the layout too. I actually did use US ANSI for a while, but that was ages ago when I was working in the US. So sure, can get used to it, of course while I was there I did not really need to type the ÅÄÖ letters very often, so that made it more doable :)
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