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
Mac Compatibility One of the biggest comments we hear from potential mechanical keyboard buyers is “these keycaps don’t work on a Mac”. Understandably, many Mac users like their CMD keys to say “CMD,” or their Option keys to say Option (instead of Meta, or Super, etc.) With our keycap releases, we’ll be offering a Mac Kit that provides a variety of different Mac system keys in different row/sizes to accommodate many different layouts. The Mac Kit will be available with most of the sets that we release.
The Profile Name There has been a lot of discussion about the name, with significant feedback from the community opposing the MT2 name. We've gone back to the drawing board and decided to rename the profile to "DCX (Drop Cylindrical X)". If you'd like to read more about the reasons behind the name change, see this post here.
What's Next? We're going to start accepting preorders for DCX keycaps on April 26th. Pricing for standard in-stock base kits will be $99, with a preorder price of $79 for the first production run. As with all of our preorders and Studio products, preorders are fully cancellable with no fees, and the product is eligible for no-hassle returns within 30 days of shipping. Samples will be shipped to popular reviewers, as well as select Drop Keyboard Club members later in May. (edit: Mistake in the poll. Will be updated and added back.)