HP Forum Archive 18

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XEQ vs. GSB Message #1 Posted by Antonio Maschio (Italy) on 4 June 2008, 9:54 a.m. Hi, I use daily my HP-35S, and despite its bugs, it's a good calculator. I used to use a HP-32SII before, but since I use also some Voyagers, there's a thing that causes me some trouble. On the HP-32SII, the EQN and the XEQ functions were not on the same level (EQN was behind a shift, I go by heart), so there was not confusion in choosing one or the other. On the Voyagers, since no EQN is present, you could only distinguish R/S from GSB/GTO, and that was all. Now, on the new HP-35, the two functions are there, all printed in white, in two different places, but quite every time I have to XEQ a program (GSB on my HP-15C), my eyes - looking for X, E and Q - are captured by E, Q and N and invariably I press EQN instead (hit 2 on 3, and that's not enough!) You may say that I should wear glasses: I already do it. You may say I don't program too often: I program quite each day, and I execute a program at least once a day. The conclusion is simple: HP: change the XEQ label to GSB. Just to ease this dumb guy's task. ;-) Ciao! -- Antonio

Re: XEQ vs. GSB Message #2 Posted by Eric Smith on 4 June 2008, 3:26 p.m., in response to message #1 by Antonio Maschio (Italy) My understanding is that the reason XEQ was introduced on the 41C was that it is used for executing built-in functions (by name) and peripheral functions, as well as user-code subroutines. I don't see any reason why XEQ is more appropriate than GSB for any of the later calculators other than the 42S.

Re: XEQ vs. GSB Message #3 Posted by Karl Schneider on 5 June 2008, 4:57 a.m., in response to message #1 by Antonio Maschio (Italy) Hi, Antonio -- I'd say that Eric has provided you a complete, concise, and correct answer. The only compelling reason for having "XEQ" instead of "GSB" on the HP-32S would be uniformity with the HP-42S. Certainly, this could have been re-evaluated for the HP-32SII and its two successors, which incorporated the equation functionality denoted "EQN" that had been denoted "EQUATIONS" on the HP-22S. Alas, it was not. -- KS

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