however non standard keys makes the board to have a fixed layout with no customization options,
There’s no “standard” set of keycap shapes on Alps keyboards, because most of the interesting ones are from the 80s or early 90s. They almost all have various funny layouts, and many keycaps end up not being interchangeable.
[...] Do you have some specific other set you have in mind? Otherwise, I don’t think your complaint has much meat to it.
While I really appreciate your comments, I'd better like to read the reasons behind the design logic Matias has. In regards with your comments, the motivation for the question is beyond current ALPS keycaps availability, and it mainly relates with the lack of standardization of caps and stabilizers for ALPS. I would like to know the reasoning for this new board just adding variety to a new ALPS board. Maybe you are right, and if someone wants ALPS she must know no customization options would be available ever.
Hey Ideus,
Sorry, I didn’t mean for my comment to be quite so aggressive/dismissive sounding. Mainly, I’m just trying to understand where you’re coming from, and what your goals are.
For instance, are you just worried that you’d purchase a keyboard and then not have as many aftermarket keycaps as you’d like? Or are you trying to use a specific set of old keycaps you already have? Or...
From my perspective it seems like any choice for a new Alps-like switch keyboard is valid, because there aren’t really any existing “standards” (beyond the shape of basic 1x1 keys), especially among keyboards still being made.
For stuff like spacebars, what I’d personally want to see Matias make is as wide a variety of sizes as they’re willing to, and in particular as many sizes in the 1.5–4 unit range as possible. I personally think spacebars bigger than about 3 units long are a waste of space, so I’ll be really happy once I can get hold of some of those 2.5x1.5 spacebars, and it sounds like maybe 2.75x1 as well. I’d also really like to see some spacebar sizes like 2.5x1, 2x1, 1.5x1, but I understand that every additional keycap shape is hugely expensive to make tooling for, and those might not have enough demand.
Among other keycap shapes, what I mostly want to see is: various small-ish keys like 1x1, 1.25x1, and 1.5x1, available in as many row profile shapes as possible. (I’d be overjoyed if there were spherical caps available, but several choices of cylindrical rows is great too.) I want to get a handful of each available shape, so I can figure out which ones I need to complete existing fun old sets of keycaps, so I can use them on new layouts.
Since I mainly want to make my own shaped keyboards, I don’t much care what layouts Matias offers for full keyboards or group-buy kits, except insofar as they use interesting keycap sizes that I can take advantage of.