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Comment by imglorp | Hacker News Reader

> I have yet to see a physical keyboard

The custom keycap business is booming. It shouldn't be too hard to make a batch of physical keyboards and then a software map to support it. There was just a story last month about some guys standardizing the writing for an African language, including getting its own Unicode set finally, and the Microsoft guys helping to to support it.

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> keycap business is booming

If you have any links related to this I would love to read more!

You might find out this world overlaps with gamers and novelty mechanical keyboard people. Check out a search like "mechanical keycaps custom artwork", eg here's one - http://www.maxkeyboard.com/custom-art-icon-or-text-cherry-mx...

Maybe give these guys a ring and see if they can recommend who they work with for non-Latin caps: https://mechanicalkeyboards.com

And also hang out on https://www.reddit.com/r/keyboards and /mechanicalkeyboards.

I haven't tried this personally, but these ppl appear to be able to print anything on the keys:

https://www.wasdkeyboards.com/

Some random examples:

http://www.wasdkeyboards.com/index.php/products/make/wasd-87...

http://www.wasdkeyboards.com/index.php/products/make/104-key...

Not the keycap thing, but I can give a +1 to the WASD company. Just bought a CODE model and very happy with their customer attention.

Can confirm! I'm typing on a WASD keyboard right now that has a custom-printed layout that I designed myself (reflecting some assorted remappings that I'd been doing in software anyway—until I got this it had been almost two decades since my keycaps reflected the actual key layout I was using). You download either a template or a complete graphic, edit it, and reupload it with your order. Super easy, and after accounting for the fact that the keys are mechanical, not even that expensive. (Way more expensive than a commodity keyboard, though.)

The mechanicalkeyboards subreddit is very active, and full of both artisans and information.

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