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
- Massdrop feels confident they can make "Holy Pandas" and as such that is why this drop opened. If Massdrop didn't feel confident they could replicate Holy Panda's then they wouldn't have done this- plain and simple. If Massdrop sold 2k+ Holy Panda's and the community received something else, I don't think Massdrop could survive the reputation hit within the community. Nobody would ever buy from them again.
- You, and many many others on these comments don't really even understand what's involved in making injection molded components, etc especially as it pertains to keyboard switches. You see tool, you see repair and you see other things and immediately start assuming Massdrop is trying to pull a fast one on you. (Why? Do you think Massdrop, a multi-million dollar company decided throwing everything away was worth making a couple grand on a bunch of plastic collectors?)
- Could Massdrop do a better job communicating things? Yeah of course, that's a dead horse that's been shot, slaughtered, revived and the cycle has repeated. I think the reality is Massdrop is between a rock and a hard place and can't provide the "samples" that the community wants at the moment- but intend to. Should they have waited to open the drop before that? Probably.
If you don't trust Massdrop, then why are you even debating giving them money? That being said, I think it was shady how Massdrop opened this drop unprepared in what appears to be just to curb the GSUS drop- but ultimately it lead to the organizer of that drop making the price per switch reasonable rather than severely upcharged... so the customer won once again. (Thanks Massdrop!) Everything in life is a risk vs reward, and clearly you're too scared of the risk... So maybe sit this one out. At the end of the day I'm pretty confident Massdrop will deliver, and if they can't- I'm pretty confident they'll refund everyone's orders, your life will continue and you can go back to happily buying $5 switches on Mechmarket.