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
I am proud to announce that the Kickstarter for HuB - a custom keycap profile - is now live and off to a great start!
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/thevankeyboards/hub-mechanical-keyboard-key-caps
Sweet article on tested about HuB http://www.tested.com/tech/826501-custom-keyboard-spotlight-hub-keycap-profile/
HuB is a custom keycap profile that can most simply be described as a cross between cherry and DSA profiles. The base set includes support for many layouts including but not limited to - 104, 1800, WKL/HHKB, MiniVan, BananaSplit/DZ60, and Planck/Preonic.
The goal is high at $500,000 but the reason for that is creating molding and process that will allow us to produce very high quality keycaps for a very low cost. We are looking to bring the cost of custom keycaps down considerably as well as decreasethe turnaround time so that we can get them faster.
This is a very ambitious project, but with the support of this community behind us, we know we can make something truly awesome.
Sincerely,
Evan Sailer
TheVan Keyboards