Landscape RPN calculator with alphanumeric display

[Joseph_21sv]

(12-09-2014 11:13 AM)walter b Wrote:  At the bottom line, layouting keyboards is fun (and graphic output makes your readers / viewers sharing it) though the real fun and satisfaction comes with a real platform IMHO. AFAICS, such a platform is missing for a landscape RPN calculator with alphanumeric display.

It's really missing? Maybe if you are talking about calculators purposefully designed to operate on RPN expressions. However, there are several models of a landscape algebraic programmable calculator with alphanumeric display—Viktor T. Toth has the following at http://www.rskey.org (he does not claim that they are only ones to have ever been produced): Canon: 1 with graphic LCD; Casio: 2 with graphic LCD and 1 with character LCD; Sharp: 5 with character LCD; TI: 4 with graphic LCD, 2 with character LCD and 2 with segmented LCD. For what it's worth to note it, these almost universally have a pixelled display (the more portable models are also universally discontinued, but that's beside the point here except that they are the genuine calculators—at least according to US examination boards). Of course, these are all ultimately inspired by HP's Voyagers.

(12-09-2014 02:03 PM)sa-penguin Wrote:  There are 49-key Bluetooth keyboards. They were inspirational in designing my HTML layout. However, even if you butchered a Bluetooth keyboard for parts, the design problems (opportunities?) quickly start to mount.

For a keypad of that size & layout, where are you are going to put the display? You need a folding "shell" case: a micro-mini laptop. If you put the "brain" CPU under the keypad, is there still room for the battery? Or should that go up top, behind the LCD? Recharging Lithium, or disposables?

I would dearly love a device in this form factor. However, I suspect the more I think about it, the more respect I will have for those designing, and actually implementing, the 43.

Check http://www.rskey.org/CMS/index.php/exhibit-hall/96. Sharp has managed to make one-piece calculators with over two fifths more keys and a 1*16 or 1*24 display. However, the cost is that, the way they have it implemented, almost two thirds of the keys are absurdly small. But a 49 key keyboard like you have mocked up only needs a Voyager form with an extra row of key space to be implemented—that is if you are willing to settle with only one or two lines of display.