155/88 ISO on a 154/87 ANSI board, suggestions/thoughts to my template welcome

[nrd]

I was trying to find a way to fit all keys/functions of a 155/88  board onto a 154/87 board. I started out with the standard German ISO layout and tried to fit it onto a ANSI  board with as few changes as possible. I also threw in my own custom hotkeys.

I'm thinking about getting an ANSI TKL from WASD with custom keycaps:

[BlueBär]

I was trying to find a way to fit all keys/functions of a 155/88 board onto a 154/87 board. I started out with the standard German ISO layout and tried to fit it onto a ANSI  board with as few changes as possible. I also threw in my own custom hotkeys.

I'm thinking about getting an ANSI TKL from WASD with custom keycaps:
(Attachment Link)

I also made my own layout for my Pure and got some caps from WASD with it but in the end I do have to say it wasn't really worth it. I would set "<" on ",", ">" on "." and "|" on "-" and not change anything else, then you have made up for the one key that's missing. Like this it doesn't make such a difference if you type on a different board with the normal German layout and you can still access the missing keys without any hassle.

[nrd]

What do you mean it wasn't worth it? Quality-wise or because the difference between the layouts isn't that big?

I'm mainly looking for keycaps that show all (or most) of my custom hotkeys. Stuff like typographic quotation marks and other glyphs and the extra layer of function keys around the RDFC cluster. So since I already want/need to have custom keycaps, it would seem a bit silly to not fill in the rest of the changes from the original ANSI layout to mine to go with it.

[BlueBär]

What do you mean it wasn't worth it? Quality-wise or because the difference between the layouts isn't that big?

Well WASD caps aren't that great (not for their price) and would only recommend them if you really need custom caps for a special layout. I now prefer blank caps (because I know any custom hotkeys) or a mix between ANSI and ISO caps (ANSI enter and left shift, rest from a German ISO set).
But also the trouble of creating and getting used to a custom layout wasn't worth it in the sense that I lost speed if I had to type on a keyboard with a standard layout, and I'm already not a fast typist.

[nrd]

Ugh … Well, thanks for the heads-up!

Did you get your WASD keys when they still used laser etching/engraving or did you get the new "UV printed" ones? From what I gather the additional coating on the new ones makes them feel a bit better.

There don't seem to be any other options for custom printed keycaps around … I guess I'll have to try them and hope I like them  I personally don't like blank caps, so if the WASD ones turn out bad I'll probably re-use the black nylon caps of my Zowie (even though people seem to like those even less than ABS keycaps, so maybe the ABS caps will feel like an improvement for me )

[BlueBär]

Did you get your WASD keys when they still used laser etching/engraving or did you get the new "UV printed" ones? From what I gather the additional coating on the new ones makes them feel a bit better.

I got engraved ones (I don't mind the feel of their surface btw). The additional coating is there to prevent them from wearing off, not for the feel. What I mean by "not great" is that you get thin printed ABS keycaps - there's a lot of better options out there.

There don't seem to be any other options for custom printed keycaps around … I guess I'll have to try them and hope I like them  I personally don't like blank caps, so if the WASD ones turn out bad I'll probably re-use the black nylon caps of my Zowie (even though people seem to like those even less than ABS keycaps, so maybe the ABS caps will feel like an improvement for me )

As I said, I would try to stick with a standard layout and use some standard caps. It makes things way easier.