Suggestions for simulator keyboard input Message #10 Posted by Andrés C. Rodríguez (Argentina) on 28 Apr 2004, 5:25 p.m., in response to message #9 by Cameron Paine
On a previous message posted about a week ago, related to Eric Smith's Nonpareil emulator, I suggested some ideas about basic keyboard mapping for PC usage of HP calculator emulators. My ideas were mostly oriented to 4-level stack models.
Number entry (including decimal point) should work from the numeric keypad.
The four basic arithmetic functions should work from the numeric keypad.
Enter should work from the numeric keypad.
The minus key on the numeric keypad, in combination with shift, should act as change sign (CHS or +/-)
The cursor-down key should work as Roll Down. Optionally, cursor-up may work as Roll Up in appropriate cases.
Cursor-right should work as X<>Y (or SWAP).
Cursor-left may work as CLx. Veli-Pekka Nousianen suggested that the main keyboard Backspace key may be a better choice, and I think he may be correct, depending on individual choices.
The preferable manner to handle these issues is to have an editable "PC keyboard to calculator-key" mapping file, because there may be issues with international PC keyboard layouts (for instance "<" and ">" or "," and "." are some of the keys that change from one layout to another); and there is also a case for notebooks, which do not have a separate numeric keypad.
With these considerations, at least the basic calculations could be handled with little or no mouse usage (with the hands on the keyboard, that is). However, less intuitive assignments or mouse clicking will be needed for specific functions as logs, trigs, stats, etc.
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