Re: Red Shift turning into Green! Message #8 Posted by Ángel Martin on 21 Nov 2009, 2:12 a.m., in response to message #7 by Raymond Del Tondo
Well said Raymond. It's hard to believe that with such a logical and simple scheme people found issues to complain about on the 48 series design, but I guess that's what people do best - finding issues LOL >)
Here on the 41Z there are a couple of compromises made, as the "Z" key isn't a real SHIFT function, but it doubles up as one. The guiding idea is that the 41Z uses the same keys as the " real" 41C, thus there's no real need to use the USER mode with multiple key assignments.
So on the 41Z keyboard, those keys without green shifted legend indicate the complex function is exactly the same as the real one. X=0? will invoke Z=0?, x=y? will call Z=W?, and so forth. Same with the "white legends" (on the key face) - which will call the complex counterpart function: SIN, COS, TAN, LN, LOG, SQRT, 1/x, x<>y, STO, RCL, ENTER^, etc.)
But it goes beyond that. For instance, pressing "Z" and any numeric key produces a complex number with the digit as real part and zero as imaginary. This is just a shortcut, and arguably not very useful (although it comes handy to do quick complex arithmetic) but it doesn't require any assignment on the digit keys, which remain used as real numbers if "Z" doesn't precede them.
The real missed opportunity is with the emulators, though. All these arrangements refer to the basic design, static on the physical machine - but on a modern emulator the key assignments (and the legends after pressing the "Z" key) should dynamically change, making absolutely obvious what functions are available when. Or maybe not, it's after all a matter of opinion :-)
Cheers,
'AM
PS, Here's the rub of a design exceeding its purpose: make the yellow SHIFT key turn green when presssed TWICE - as well as the shifted legends on all the other keys would change color and text
... so SHIFT-SHIFT means "Z". How's that for a complex keyboard? But IT WORKS!
Edited: 21 Nov 2009, 2:23 a.m.
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