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 learned about the K-Type about a week after I started here, and it’s taken almost two years from then to finally get to this point. A huge thanks to everyone at Input Club (@HaaTa, @OverKill, @Parak, @AndrewLekashman, @Jbondeson) who has put in enormous amounts of work the past couple years and learned a lot over that time.
When the project first started, Input Club wanted to solve the problem of a lack of a good RGB TKL keyboard on the market. While many more have been introduced since the conception of the K-Type, I can still confidently say this is one of the most advanced keyboards ever with some of the most thoughtful features I’ve ever seen. They’ve made something great and I can’t wait for the community to get their hands on it.
This is also a very special project for Massdrop. It will be one of our first keyboards that will work right out of the box. Instead of keyboard kits, which require assembly, the K-Type will be a fully assembled keyboard with no soldering required. The best part is Input Club added hot-swap capabilities to this keyboard—meaning it’s compatible with the MX-style switches of your choice.
Thanks again to the community for everyone’s support over the years! We’re beyond excited for this one to finally come to fruition!