Very cool set and kitting seems very flexible. A couple notes re: 40s kitting - an additional R4 1u for ortho support and potentially 2 more R3 1.25u caps for boards like prime_e which uses 7x 1.25u in total I see this was decided upon in OP. Definitely consider the extra R4 1u though
R4 is pretty much an upsidedown R2. So if you are talking about 12u ortho, you could use that R2 in the 40s kit as an R4 modifier.
That's true, I guess you can use the 13th R4 1u and move it to R2. I think in general it's pretty restrictive on ortho anyway (1x 2u bar and need to use scooped homing on R3 for that to work) but a separate bars kit would solve some of that and I would always use homing anyway. I guess upon second viewing it's pretty restrictive for 40s layouts with a few extra keys here and there, but it meets minimum needs for a lot of popular boards.
I'm still getting my head around SA profile and which rows correspond to which on the actual keyboard, so it took me a while to parse these couple of comments. Having worked through it, I see what they mean now and I think I agree with them, but I thought I might as well show my working in case anybody else was struggling to figure it out as I did.
I'm assuming this discussion is about using just the alphas + 40s kit to kit out a 4-row ortho layout like the Planck. If my understanding of SA profile from reading this thread is correct, then the QWERTY row is R2, the ASDF row is R3, the ZXCV row is R4 (which is a flipped R2), and the bottom-row mods are R3. Planck is 12x4, so you need 24 R2/R4 and 24 R3 1U keys to fill it out, or if you use a 2U space you can have 22 R3 1U keys and 1 R3 2U space. Taking just the 1U keys from the alpha and 40s kits, we have:
- R2: 12 in alpha, 1 in 40s = 13
- R3: 11 in alpha (+2 homing), 10 in 40s = 21 (or 23 if you include homing). 1 2U space in alpha.
- R4: 10 in alpha, 1 in 40s = 11
If we swap one of the R2s to an R4 we get
exactly the right number of keys for R2/R4. For R3 we can do it assuming we include homing and we make use of the 2U space bar in alphas.
So, if you want to kit out a Planck with fully transparent keys, you can do it with just these two kits! If you want to kit out a Preonic, you can buy the F-Row kit to get the top keys.
If you have a Planck with another SA set on it and you want to replace just the mods with polyclears, however, you're out of luck. The 40s set doesn't include a 2U space, and it doesn't have enough 1U R3 keys to make up the difference (you need 14, assuming you don't have a 2U space, and the 40s kit only includes 10). You also need 4 R2/R4 keys, and the 40s kit includes just 2.
If the 40s kit could be expanded to include 2 more R2/R4 keys, 2 more R3 keys, and a 2U space, then there would be enough to make this work and allow Planck/ortho 40s users to build out their mods without forcing them to buy into alphas. If this would increase the cost of the 40s kit significantly, though, perhaps it isn't worth it.
Anyway, I'm not advocating for anything in particular here, I just needed to work this out for my own benefit and thought I might as well put it out there in case anyone was wondering, or in case I've calculated wrong in which case please correct me!
