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
Then you'll need an R1 Del, R1 Home, R2 Page Up, R3 Page Down, R4 End key if you want to match profiles.
The hardest key to get of those would be the 5.5u space bar. The only kits that I have seen that have 5.5u space bars were XDA Godspeed and XDA Canvas off the top of my head, but I would assume XDA kits would have the 5.5u space bar. I've seen a lot of sets not support 5.5u space bars, so it really limits your choices.