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
"PROFILE AND MANUFACTURER Choosing a profile for the set essentially chooses the profile as well. Signature Plastics owns the SA, DSA, and..."
I believe one of the instances of the word "profile" in the first sentence of this excerpt (not to include the title, which I copied here only to help you find the locate the excerpt) should actually be "manufacturer". Not sure which one you were going for, but if you choose a manufacturer for a color they offer, then you are limited to that manufacturer's profile selection, and if you choose a profile, you have then chosen a manufacturer and their color palette.
I really enjoyed the article, BTW. I figured that creating a keyset was about this complicated, given the huge number of keyboards out there and all of the plastic/color/legend application types are available in different ways from different manufacturers. This does help to explain why designers of certain keysets have made the choices they have, and why a choice isn't always just about the pricetag.