HP Forum Archive 15

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Nonpareil release 0.72 Message #1 Posted by Eric Smith on 20 June 2005, 6:40 a.m. I just released version 0.72 of Nonpareil which is the first release to include the 82143A printer support I mentioned here last week. Graphics and custom characters (BLDSPEC) are supported, subject to the same limitations as a real 82143A (42 byte buffer size). The printout is shown in a separate window at two selectable sizes, and can be saved to a PNG file. Saving as text will probably be provided in a future release. The 41C and Voyager keyboard support has been enhanced to provide two-key rollover matching the actual calculators. Thanks to John Hogerhuis for his comments and suggestions regarding the keyboard characteristics. I need to verify that the two-key rollover behavior is the same on Classics, Woodstocks, Topcats, etc.; in which case I'll make the same changes for those models. Some progress has been made on the Windows port, but it still isn't ready. I expect to include a Windows preview release (possibly with less features than the Linux version) with release 0.73 or 0.74.

Re: Nonpareil release 0.72 Message #2 Posted by Valentin Albillo on 20 June 2005, 7:43 a.m., in response to message #1 by Eric Smith Hi, Eric: Eric posted: "Some progress has been made on the Windows port, but it still isn't ready. I expect to include a Windows preview release (possibly with less features than the Linux version) with release 0.73 or 0.74." Perhaps you would consider increasing the priority of getting a Windows version out as soon as possible, on the basis that you'll get several orders of magnitude more suggestions, error reports, etc., from interested "beta-testers" than what you're getting right now. Even if you personally are more interested in a Linux or Unix version, the inputs you'll get for the Windows version (e.g., error reports) will probably be extremely useful to debug and improve the UX version as well. IMHO. Best regards from V.

Re: Nonpareil release 0.72 Message #3 Posted by Namir on 20 June 2005, 11:47 a.m., in response to message #2 by Valentin Albillo Eric, I second Valentin's request. Putting out a Windows version will get you a truck load of feedback ... mine included. Namir

Re: Nonpareil release 0.72 Message #4 Posted by Chan Tran (USA) on 21 June 2005, 1:01 p.m., in response to message #3 by Namir While it's nice to have the Windows version. In the mean time I wonder which version of Linux do I need to run this thing? Also what kind of PC power is needed?

Re: Nonpareil release 0.72 Message #5 Posted by Eric Smith on 21 June 2005, 2:39 p.m., in response to message #4 by Chan Tran (USA) I develop and test on Fedora Core 3 and Fedora Core 4. I'm not sure whether it will work on distributions much older than that. I don't think it needs a huge amount of CPU power, but I haven't tried it on anything slower than an 800 MHz Crusoe (roughly equivalent to a 400-600 MHz Pentium II/III). It ran fine on that. The Windows version will be supplied with the necessary DLLs for GTK etc.

Re: Nonpareil release 0.72 Message #6 Posted by Howard Owen on 22 June 2005, 4:31 p.m., in response to message #5 by Eric Smith It runs fine on a ~400MHz ARMV5 in the Zaurus C860. And that's with software emulated floating point. None of the calculators emulated by Nonpareil were speed demons compare to the average processor built in the last 10 years or so. Moore's law is a wonderful thing! You probably need recent versions of glib and gtk to get it to compile.

Re: Nonpareil release 0.72 Message #7 Posted by Mike T. on 20 June 2005, 8:58 a.m., in response to message #1 by Eric Smith I an continually amazed by Eric's ability to get to grips with the internal workings of the older HP calculators. I've tried compiling several previous releases but without success... so from my point of view a packaged binary release for the most popular Linux distributions would be a major step in the right direction, particularly as this would obviously this would include a DEB package Debian 3.1 (Sarge). Mike T.

Re: Nonpareil release 0.72 Message #8 Posted by Arnaud Amiel on 20 June 2005, 9:10 a.m., in response to message #7 by Mike T. I would also appreciate a binary version that I could run from a live CD linux as I don't have enough space left on my hardrive to have a proper install and I can't do without windows yet... Of course the next step would be to have a live distro including Nonpareil... Arnaud

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