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'm unsubscribing from the email list today. Good riddance. You're going to be looked at as an example of a business that was a GREAT idea, but the execution was shit.
When I can go to Amazon, and buy for less, massdrop's entire model, of price-breaking for group qtys is undermined.
I can imagine the conversation now: "Hello keycap mfr... I'm a brand new purchaser for Massdrop! pleaaaaaaaaaaaaase give us a discount? PLEASE?! $3 off for national distrubutor qty's!??!? thank you so much gracious sir... THANK you for your generocity"
You guys need to up your negotiation game.
Anyone can make a phone call and pay full retail... I think we're here at massdrop because we DONT want that....
What a lot of users here seem to misunderstand is that this is not a retail set. The "MSRP" listed on Massdrop has no meaning. The amount of money Massdrop is saving you also has no meaning. It is posted because it is Massdrop's policy to show that you are saving some arbitrary quantity by shopping here. This policy unfortunately results in confusion for people who are not familiar with custom keysets. Just keep this simple fact in mind: the posted MSRP means nothing because this is not a retail item.
You cannot pick up the phone, call GMK and buy one of these sets. You would have to order 500 of them, GMK won't make it for you if you order less. You won't find this set on Amazon. They don't exist yet and Amazon has definitely not placed an order for 500 of them. The keyboard community is trying to get 500 people together on Massdrop so that we can hit the MOQ and get GMK to manufacture the sets.
The fact that this is a custom set also increases the price, another factor that has greatly confused people here. Tai-Hao, Vortex, Ducky and others offer collections of basic keycap sets. These are retail sets that are in continuous production. They can be found on Amazon, other keyboard shopping sites and will pop up on Massdrop too, usually with some savings over the other sites. If you are new to mechanical keyboards, those brands may offer you a more attractive aftermarket keycap entry price than this GMK set. They are great value for people with standard keyboard layouts, but provide very little layout flexibility.
What the GMK SNES set offers is a very complete base kit that will work well for people with larger keyboard collections, keyboards with function clusters and non-standard space bar rows, or with custom keyboards, such as the WhiteFox keyboard currently up on Massdrop < https://www.massdrop.com/buy/the-whitefox-keyboard>. It is rare to find keycap sets that support 1.75u RSHIFT or 1.5u BS. You will definitely not receive that level of support with retail sets.
I hope this addresses your concerns.
20151222: Modified MOQ statement after additional research (Wodan). Added function cluster keyboards as a possible interest group.