Possible International Kits for Custom Keycap Sets.

This webpage lists several possible kits that would allow completing a keyboard with a non-English national layout, starting off the base kit of a custom keycap set that only supports the English (USA) national layout (over an ANSI physical layout). This webpage is meant as a reference resource for kit designers.

Index.

This document is comprised of the following sections:

• General notes.
• NorDeUK+++.
• BRESLAPTIT.
• French.
• Islands.

General notes.

Each kit supports a determined list of known national layouts and lists all the alphanumeric or “alpha” keys that are required by each of them, that would not appear in a base kit that supports only the English (USA) national layout over an ANSI physical layout (so, for example, a kit supporting German wouldn’t include the row 4 Z key, as it’s already present in a base kit, but one supporting French would include the row 2 Z key, as that one isn’t present).

The English (USA) national layout is the only major layout that does not use the tertiary (AltGr) and quaternary (AltGr‑Shift) layers. All others use those layers in varying percentages, and thus need keycaps where the characters produced are printed on the respective keycaps. Now, due to the influence of a particular keycap profile created and still manufactured in the United States of America (not naming any names, but Surely Anyone will be able to guess which one it is), whose caps look great when they have a single legend, look okay with two legends and look horrible with three or four, some kit designers have taken to prefer omitting the tertiary (and quaternary) legends out of aesthetic considerations (and reduced cost, due to the smaller number of needed keycaps), independently of the keycap profile that is being used... functionality be damned. This page lists two versions of each kit, one with all the tertiary (and quaternary, if need be) legends on alphanumeric keycaps, and one with all the tertiary legends omitted (but this is still a bad idea, okay?).

In each chart, a few keycaps are marked with the legends “corner”, “movable” and “extra”. The meaning of each of these legends is:

• Corner: it’s a key that goes on the top left corner of an alphanumeric block in a normal keyboard (the same position that `~ takes in an English (USA) keyboard).

  For aesthetic reasons, base kits usually contain two versions of the English (USA) corner keycap, one “alpha-colored” and one “mod-colored”. A fully realized international kit may contain the same alternatives for its own corner keycaps as well.

• Movable: it’s a key whose position varies, the same way it happens to the \| key in an English (USA) keyboard, depending on the shape and size of the Enter and Backspace keys. See the document Why Do Keycap Sets have so many Copies of the Backslash-Pipe Key? for a detailed explanation of this phenomenon.

  Many base kits also provide an additional “mod-colored” row 2 1.5U \| keycap. A fully realized international kit may also contain the corresponding row 2 1.5U movable keycaps for the languages it supports.

• Extra: it’s a key that goes between LSHIFT and Z in an ISO or ISANSI keyboard.

The following example illustrates each of these categories:

Each of these alphanumeric blocks has the German national layout laid on top of a different physical layout: ISO, ISANSI, BAE (common) and HHKB-like.

NorDeUK+++.

Many keycap sets have a base kit that supports only the English (USA) [over ANSI] and English (UK) [over ISO] national layouts, and a separate kit (usually called “NorDe”) with support for German and a few Nordic language layouts. Others support only the English (USA) national layout [over ANSI or ISO; sometimes even only over ANSI] and have another kit (usually called “NorDeUK”) for English (UK), German, and the Nordic language layouts. Generally, the Nordic layouts that do get full support are Danish, Norwegian, Finnish and Swedish, while the rest (national, like Icelandic, or subnational, like Faroese) have to make do with partial support.

NorDeUK+++ is a possible catch-all kit that supports all most of the national layouts in the region, namely: English (USA) (over ANSISO or ISO), English (UK), Danish, Estonian, Faroese, German, Icelandic, Norwegian and Swedish & Finish.

As it stands, the kit ensures English (USA) is supported on ANSISO and ISO keyboards. The rest of the national layouts are supported on ISO keyboards, but not ISANSI ones; to do it, the row 2 versions of the movable keycaps would need to be added.

Note: the Latvian and Lithuanian layouts are too different to be conflated in this kit; English (UK Extended) could be added as well (but not yet... see below).

Note: although the official specification for the Danish, Estonian, Faroese, Icelandic, Norwegian and Swedish & Finish national layouts dictate the placement of the character € (U+20AC, EURO SIGN) under AltGr‑E, Microsoft’s implementations of those layouts place it additionally under AltGr‑5. A full NorDeUK+++ kit may include the 5 % € keycap to appease the Microsoft groupies satisfy those who actually like this option.

BRESLAPTIT.

BRESLAPTIT is a possible kit that would add support for the Italian, Portuguese (Brazil), Portuguese (Portugal) and Spanish (Spain) national layouts, and the Spanish (Latin America) supranational layout.

Italian support is only for the 142 standard, not the older and obsolete 141 standard, although the latter would have a high degree of support as well.

It’s tempting to call this “Western Mediterranean”, but that would leave out Maltese (which is too similar to English (UK) to be succesfully conflated here). “Peninsulas” won’t work, either, as it would leave out Greek.

Note: although the official specification for the Italian, Portuguese (Portugal) and Spanish (Spain) national layouts dictate the placement of the character € (U+20AC, EURO SIGN) under AltGr‑E, Microsoft’s implementations of those layouts place it additionally under AltGr‑5. A full BRESLAPTIT kit may include the 5 % € keycap to appease the Microsoft groupies satisfy those who actually like this option.

French.

French is a possible kit that would add support for the French (France) and French (Belgium) layouts. The... quirky... nature of these two AZERTY layouts makes it infeasible to add others to this proposed kit.

Islands.

Islands is a possible kit that would add support for the English (USA) (over ANSISO or ISO), English (UK), English (UK) Extended, Irish and Maltese (both in its 48-key and 47-key variants) layouts.

As it stands, the kit ensures English (USA) is supported on ANSISO and ISO keyboards. The rest of the national layouts are supported on ISO keyboards, but not ISANSI ones (except the Maltese 47-key variant, which is supported in ANSI but not ANSISO keyboards); to do it, the row 2 versions of the movable keycaps (and the one row 3 movable keycap as well) would need to be added.

Last update: 29/10/2022.

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