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
This was my first time tearing down a keyboard and I had a couple of minor issues that I thought I would share:
• The backside of the keyboard had 4 screw holes, but looked like it only had 3 screws in it. One of the holes was white. I had some trouble removing the case, and then realized that the white was some sort of paper or something. I scraped it away with a small screwdriver and revealed the fourth screw head. After removing that the case came apart relatively easily.
• I wasn't sure at first how to remove the larger stabilized keys. On my Code keyboard, they use those terrible wire bars and I was afraid of breaking them off. On this keyboard though, they are just extra Cherry keycap slots on each end of the long keys. The normal keycap puller worked just fine for all of them. For the spacebar, I just pulled on one end first, then the other.
• You don't need to remove all the keycaps to change the case. I just removed any keys that were adjacent to an edge. The interior keycaps didn't need to be removed, except for D, F, R, which were over top of a screw that needs to be removed
• Others had mentioned problems with shorting out their keyboards on the aluminum case and needing some non-conductive material under the circuit board. I haven't noticed any issue with this yet, and I didn't use any non-conductive material under the circuit board. Fingers crossed!
• When putting it all back together, make sure to secure the battery again with some double-sided tape to keep it from moving around.
I added a couple of pics below.
Cheers!