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
My only major issue with these caps is that there is variability in legend translucency. So, keys are arbitrarily dark/bright relative to one another despite the underlying LEDs having uniform brightness. You can see this to some degree in the first photo and more so in the second photo/overhead view. In particular, G, 7 (R1), 9 (R1), and HOME, are significantly less translucent than the other caps. The variance is somewhat understated in the photo. Also, the arrow legends on the numpad keys do not illuminate due to their location relative to my board's surface mount LEDs and the stems.
They'll do for now. I think I will have to buy a plastics company to achieve my dream of doubleshot, frosted translucent legend keycaps in SA profile.
Photos: 1) Caps installed on my budget mech (E-Element X-2000)
2) Overhead view showing variance in legend translucency
3) Despite the issues, they still look pretty classy in my workstation