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
High-Strength Material Not all ABS plastics are created equal. Different raw material ratios in ABS blends will change specific material properties. DCX keycaps are made of the same high-quality ABS plastic that make up MT3 double-shot keycaps. That means you can expect the same color vibrancy and shine resilience that so many have come to love. The manufacturing process that we're using is expected to be compatible with PBT as well—so once we've gotten our ABS production humming along, we'll be experimenting with PBT to see what we can come up with.
Expansive Kit Compatibility Like many of our offerings, our goal is to have a single Base Kit that can accommodate a variety of popular keyboard layouts. The Base Kit that will be offered for initial DCX keycap sets will include the following: We’ve also designed the DCX toolsets with extensibility in mind, with plans to add sublegends, novelties, alice, ortho, 40s, icon mods and anything else the community comes up with too. In-Stock Availability DCX Keycap sets will be produced with the same ethos as all of our keycap offerings: to expand community accessibility via in-stock availability. It takes us 4 – 6 months to go from an idea, to color matching, to resin acquisition, mass production, quality control, and finally shipping. When in production, we can make sets quickly and efficiently at scale so that we can deliver preorders and have sufficient inventory for drop.com and other distribution channels. As part of our launch program, we'll be revealing an interest check/poll for the community to vote on different colorways. The most popular selections will go into production and ship in Q3 2022. DCX tools will be available to any designer who wants to release a set of keycaps that meets MOQ requirements. What's next? Next week, we'll review some close-up studio photos of the keycaps, start the poll for a future colorway, and talk about sprue marks and Mac compatibility. (edit: profile name change)