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 project actually started in June 2015, at the time a hi-profile PBT set was a mirage. No manufacturer likes PBT and dye-sublimation is a fine art few can master. Anyway I presented the idea to MD that gave me unconditioned support!
To be clear: this is not a beamspring clone and it has very-little-to-nothing to share with SA. Thanks to the community we collected very rare vintage high profile keycaps and we started thinking how to make them work on modern keyboards. With that heritage we designed something that I believe --and I hope you'll agree-- is something beautiful and unique.
I'm also incredibly grateful to MD that agreed to make the tooling for both an angled and a flat bottom row. The former has probably a sleeker profile, but possibly the latter is better for long typing hours. Even better, you won't have choose one or the other because all base kits will get both versions! So try for yourself and pick what it is more comfortable to you.
I will give you more insights in the coming days (hours?) but I just wanted to chime in to say that this is a true work of passion, designed by enthusiasts for the community! The keycaps profile --unoriginally codenamed MT3-- will be available to anyone to use for future projects on MD. If you have a cool idea for a keycaps set to be released in this profile, just contact me or MD and we'll make your high-profile desires come true (hold on cowboy. not just yet! many moons have to pass yet).
See you later and stay tuned!