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
Life cycles mean nothing...mechanical keyboards are actually very unreliable because of all the individual parts. Those Dell rubberdomes are super reliable because it only relies on one rubber sheet, and this keyboard (as well as Topre) follows the same principles, versus the possibility of having one of the 60-100+ switches failing on a Cherry keyboard. As you can imagine, there's a much higher risk for failure of a Cherry keyboard.
Some day, I'll write a more elaborate version of this answer to share with everyone, but these keyboards definitely aren't a downgrade.
I do acknowledge that Cherry MX switches and clones have greater repairability. Switch die out, solder in a new one. Board completely fries, harvest the switches for new board, etc. However, I think for a majority of people that do not want to solder or open up their keyboards, a topre or clone has wonderful build quality and typing feel.
Torpre are like luxury cars, you cannot and do not want to mess with the machinery while Cherry are like suped up race cars that people have tinkered and fine tuned to their own taste and perfection.