HP Solve article on thousands separators Message #1 Posted by Martin Pinckney on 20 Jan 2011, 9:21 a.m.
Reading the "Commas in the HP Calculator Display" article by Richard Nelson, I was surprised to learn that "The HP48/49/50
series of machines will ... display the thousands separators in the FIX mode."
Surprised, because this has been a topic of discussion here, and I came away from said discussions with the belief that RPL machines could not display the thousands separators at all, because said RPL machines have to be able to process multiple kinds of objects, not just numerical ones. Now, I suppose that only applies to the command line.
Anyway, I have been a fan of the delimited display, but previously had resigned myself to not having it on my 48sx. My curiosity was piqued, however, because I almost always use FIX mode, but could not remember seeing the separators! So I turned on my main 48sx, and, I was right, no separators. I also have a beat-up 48gx that I never use, so I tried that, and saw the separators. Was this feature absent from the SX? No, I have Java installed on my main SX, so I tried a plain vanilla SX, and viola! Separators! So either this feature is not implemented in Java, or there is a setting to turn it on that I don't know about.
To further extend this rambling, while playing with the GX, I noticed that the display for mode setting looks just like the 38g not at all like the 48sx. Again curious, I dug out a 38g and tried it in FIX mode, and NO separators. Interesting.
|