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
Such a shame there's no support for stepped capslock. Really great for vintage cherry caps, along with the 1.5-1-1.5-7-1.5-1-1.5 bottom row.
This kit can get more expensive than a white fox for international customers due to the markup for caps and much higher shipping rate.
But I do sense a few more ISO things coming up this year for keycaps.
When talking about upcoming ISO things this year, I've been barking up that tree alot but want to be a little more elaborate on what I personally really hope for. I've seen a couple of ISO options recently that I had to pass on. You will hardly find alot of buyers for ISO Poker or ISO TKL keyboards since they are available in the EU with free shipping and no tax/customs.
Regarding ISO keycaps, please consider that if the only ISO option is a UK kit, other ISO folks might not be willing to pay 100$+ for keycaps that have the right layout but the wrong legends. In that price range, it's about getting a perfect set or nothing. Things look differently when it comes to cheaper keycap sets (<50$) where I care less about the legends if I can just get the keys right. Just adding those four ISO-specific caps to the common chinese keycap sets (Vortex, NPKC, TaiHao, Gateron ...) would really make me happy.
EDIT: Oh and one more question regarding the layout options. I took a closer look at the variants and got a little confused by this pic:
1.5 | 1.0 | 1.5 | 7 | 1.5 | 1.0 | 1.5 Bottom row but it is labeled as a 1.5 | 1.25 | 1.25 | 7 | 1.5 | 1.0 | 1.5 Bottom row Please tell me the labels are wrong and the graphic is right :(