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
It's the cheapest I could find with brown switches and non-red back light.
But without prior experience, £100 seems a lot before I know whether I like it.
I had (perhaps naively) thought there might be a cheaper option I could use as a trial first (around £50-60).
in Germany the advice for newbies is often the Cherry MX Board 3.0 for ~ €60, we've allmost every week good deals for Coolermaster mks around €70 - €90, depending on model at http://www.zackzack.de/html/index.html, but this won't help you.
Something around €100 is a "normal" pricerange to look for genuine Cherrys, i've no idea about possibilities/deals in the UK, but i like to shop at http://www.keyboardco.com/, i've gotten my Filco Minila there, good reliable english business.
You might get lucky looking at Ebay or https://www.reddit.com/r/mechmarket/search?q=%22EU%22+NOT+%22CA%22+NOT+%22US%22+NOT+%22AU%22&sort=new&restrict_sr=on&t=all to find something for a better price.
The need for ISO-UK is limiting you, it's the same for my german mates insisting on ISO-DE, the wider freedom of possibilities is starting to go ANSI mks and use something like http://eurkey.steffen.bruentjen.eu/start.html?lang=en. I love it for years by now and won't switch back to ISO, but i understand it's not possible for everyone depending on needs, work whatever.
Good luck to find something pleasing you!