Re: HP-42s vs. HP-34s Message #6 Posted by Jeff O. on 20 June 2012, 9:02 a.m., in response to message #5 by Marcus von Cube, Germany
Certainly the ideal hardware platform would have a display capable of displaying real plus imaginary or magnitude plus angle on a single line, or at worst displaying the components on two lines in the display. Despite my suggestion that the dot matrix area of the WP34S display could be used for that purpose, I will not argue that it would be a very good way to do so. But I will argue that the 15C-style of holding and handling complex values in a parallel, unseen stack, with various commands for swapping and/or displaying the components, would be preferable to the method chosen for WP34S, which is of course a descendant of the 32S family. Certainly the 8 level stack makes this methodology much more workable than the 32S implementation, but I still believe that the 15C way would be better. If you took a poll, my guess is that many or even most users would agree with me. But this has of course been discussed many times, and I am not suggesting that a poll be taken or that the 15C paradigm should be implemented just because I think it would be preferable. It is easy for me to suggest things that would require a lot of work by someone else.
edit - My original post ended with a remark which Valentin pointed out could be taken as an insult or snide remark. I did not intend it as such, so have edited the above to better convey my meaning. (Of course my remark was quoted by Valentin below where he rightly called me out for the remark. There it shall remain for posterity as evidence of my lack of good judgment, as it probably should.) My apologies to Walter, Pauli and Marcus if any offense was taken.
Edited: 20 June 2012, 11:37 a.m. after one or more responses were posted
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