RPN83P: RPN calculator for TI-83+ TI-84+ inspired by HP-42S

[johnb]

(04-14-2024 11:30 AM)floppy Wrote:  Under windows, looks like a student TI-NSPIRE whatever graph&OS SW must be installed, a license key must exists (since I bought one as second hand, no license key so far given) = I am stuck there, too.

Have you considered reaching out to TI's support and asking what it takes to get a license key for a used Inspire? This cannot be the only scenario that leaves a user stranded. It may be as simple as providing them the serial number of your device.

[bxparks]

(04-14-2024 11:30 AM)floppy Wrote:  What are the instructions for installing on "TI-Nspire with TI-84 Plus Keypad (OS v2.46)"?

So far my findings.

Under linux, a first try with OS 2.54 and tilp was not successfull (the upload of the rpn83p.8xk had no effect: no error, app not seen in the calculator).

Under windows, looks like a student TI-NSPIRE whatever graph&OS SW must be installed, a license key must exists (since I bought one as second hand, no license key so far given) = I am stuck there, too.

I'm not sure what's causing your problems. My Nspire (w/ the 84+ keypad) behaves exactly like a regular 84+SE. I used the same tilp program (the package name is 'tilp2' on my Linux Mint 21.1, basically an Ubuntu Linux 22.04). I needed no license key, no OS upgrade, nothing. I verified the installation process using both the mini USB-B port and the 2.5mm GraphLink port.

[floppy]

(04-14-2024 03:37 PM)bxparks Wrote:  My Nspire (w/ the 84+ keypad) behaves exactly like a regular 84+SE

In TILP under Linux, by chosing the device "TI84+USB" and NOT "TI-NSPIRE" , the RPN83P was uploaded. Will see if it works fully like the usual TI84+ hardware. I assume that will be the case.

[bxparks]

(04-14-2024 08:30 PM)floppy Wrote:  In TILP under Linux, by chosing the device "TI84+USB" and NOT "TI-NSPIRE" , the RPN83P was uploaded.

Yes, that's definitely a potential source of confusion, since people may not fully realize that "the TI-Nspire is emulating a TI-84+" really means exactly what that says. I have updated the USER_GUIDE.md document with a note that explains this.

[bxparks]

I am changing the appearance of the RPN83P menus so that a MenuFolder is displayed with a small line above the box, so that it looks like a file folder icon. This makes the menus look like the HP-48 series, instead of the HP-42S. Here's a screenshot:

   

If anyone has strong objections, this would be the time to raise them, before I spend multiple days updating the 400-500 screenshots of those menus in various documents. It is possible to make this configurable with MODE options (a "42S-style" or a "48-style"), but I'm not seeing any downsides to the 48-style menus, so I would prefer to avoid a MODE option for this.

Funny story: I had seen screenshots of the HP-48 series for 20+ years, and I never knew what those little lines meant. Until 1-2 months ago, when I realized that those are file folder icons.

[Steve Simpkin]

(04-16-2024 06:43 PM)bxparks Wrote:  I am changing the appearance of the RPN83P menus so that a MenuFolder is displayed with a small line above the box, so that it looks like a file folder icon. This makes the menus look like the HP-48 series, instead of the HP-42S. Here's a screenshot:



If anyone has strong objections, this would be the time to raise them, before I spend multiple days updating the 400-500 screenshots of those menus in various documents. It is possible to make this configurable with MODE options (a "42S-style" or a "48-style"), but I'm not seeing any downsides to the 48-style menus, so I would prefer to avoid a MODE option for this.

Funny story: I had seen screenshots of the HP-48 series for 20+ years, and I never knew what those little lines meant. Until 1-2 months ago, when I realized that those are file folder icons.

I would be surprised if anyone complained since it just makes it obvious that it is a Menu Folder rather than just a command. It would have been nice to have this feature on the HP-42S but I suspect they didn't have space on the limited LCD.

[johnb]

(04-16-2024 06:43 PM)bxparks Wrote:  I am changing the appearance of the RPN83P menus so that a MenuFolder is displayed with a small line above the box, so that it looks like a file folder icon.

...

If anyone has strong objections, this would be the time to raise them, before I spend multiple days updating the 400-500 screenshots of those menus [...] It is possible to make this configurable with MODE options [...], but I'm not seeing any downsides to the 48-style menus, so I would prefer to avoid a MODE option for this.

I see no reason for the option, either. Why would you _want_ to not see the difference? BTW, I think this is definitely a worthwhile change. I like the fact that the difference is subtle but obvious, and I always found the on screen menus of the 48-series to be pretty intuitive.

(04-16-2024 06:43 PM)bxparks Wrote:  Funny story: I had seen screenshots of the HP-48 series for 20+ years, and I never knew what those little lines meant. Until 1-2 months ago, when I realized that those are file folder icons.

I think this must be an occupational hazard with scientists, engineers, and technical types. We see what others don't, but sometimes miss the obvious. Either that, or it's a built-in "feature" of our personality type. My own canonical example is that I've liked "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" since my teen years (in the 1970s), but it wasn't until a dozen years ago when I was writing a funny response to someone and called them "a filthy English Knnn--nigit!" that I realized they were just grossly mispronouncing "knight!"

[bxparks]

(04-17-2024 06:19 PM)johnb Wrote:  

(04-16-2024 06:43 PM)bxparks Wrote:  but I'm not seeing any downsides to the 48-style menus, so I would prefer to avoid a MODE option for this.

I see no reason for the option, either. Why would you _want_ to not see the difference? BTW, I think this is definitely a worthwhile change. I like the fact that the difference is subtle but obvious, and I always found the on screen menus of the 48-series to be pretty intuitive.

It turns out there *is* a downside to the 48-style folder icon.

The RPN83P used a non-blinking underscore cursor to match the one used by the HP-42S. The problem is that the underscore character is visually too similar to the short dash of the menu folder tab. If multiple menu folders are displayed, the underline character can get lost in the sea of short dashes, and user can have difficulty finding the location of the cursor. (See screenshot 1).

   

The solution was to change the RPN83P cursor to be a blinking block character. (See screenshot 2).

   

The side benefit of using the blinking block cursor is that it is supported natively by the TI-OS. This makes it much easier to implement a scrollable cursor that supports the LEFT and RIGHT arrow keys to edit a long input line before input termination. (see screenshot 3) This feature is similar to the command line editing of the 48/49/50 series, but using the traditional RPN mode instead of RPL.

   

Anyway, the code for these UI changes is basically done. Changing the shape of the cursor means that I have to update the majority of the 1346 screenshots embedded in various documents. And since the cursor is blinking, I have to hit the screen capture just at the right time to grab the cursor. This will be so much fun.

[Eric Rechlin]

(05-08-2024 05:08 PM)bxparks Wrote:  Changing the shape of the cursor means that I have to update the majority of the 1346 screenshots embedded in various documents. And since the cursor is blinking, I have to hit the screen capture just at the right time to grab the cursor.

Or just manually edit the screenshots to paste the block over the underscore instead of making new ones. Still tedious, but way quicker than making new ones and timing the blink just right. Or just don't worry about it yet and deal with it when you have time; it's a trivial thing and maybe some of those screenshots you may have to remake again soon anyway for later changes.

[bxparks]

The next version (v0.11.0) of RPN83P is focused on improving the user interface and experience of the app. It will add very few mathematical or numerical features. Many of these UI/UX changes could have been made earlier, but I often have to implement a feature before I can figure out the best UI for it ("form should follow function" as they say).

But the other reason that these UI/UX changes were delayed is that I find UI programming difficult (compared to math functions, computer algorithms, storage formats, for example). It tends to involve intricate handling of lots of UI events from the user, which cause a combinatorial explosion of internal states, with tons of edge cases and error conditions, which must all be handled correctly, to prevent crashing the application (if I'm lucky), or corrupting of some unrelated data randomly exposed at a later time (if I am unlucky). An off-by-one bug seems to be lurking in every 2-3 lines of assembly code. I cannot tell you how many times an off-by-one error completely wiped the memory of the calculator and crashed my emulator during the development of this release.

Anyway, I think the best way to summarize the upcoming UI/UX changes is with this annotated screenshot:

   

I have mentioned some of these changes in my earlier posts, but here is a summary:

• use new icon for menu folders, with a small dash to represent a folder tab
• change cursor from an underscore to a blinking block, and support the following arrow keys (similar to the HP 48/49/50 series):
  • LEFT arrow: move the cursor left
  • RIGHT arrow: move the cursor right
  • 2ND LEFT: move to the beginning of line
  • 2ND RIGHT: move to the end of line
    
• update the input modifier keys to behave reasonably
  • . (period): insert a decimal point, unless there is already one inserted
  • (-) (CHS): change the sign of the mantissa, exponent, or Record component (e.g. Date, Time, DateTime) appropriately
  • 2ND EE: insert an 'E', unless it has already been entered (this is different from the 48/49/50, mostly because I'm not entirely sure what the HP-50g is doing, and I ran out of energy to try to figure out my 50g)
    
• new MODE > SSIZ: resize the RPN stack, supports 4 to 8 levels
  • new annunciators on the top status line (4STK, 5STK, 6STK, 7STK, 8STK)
  • compress the top status line, to squeeze in the 'xSTK' annunciator
  • (if you are wondering, an infinite NSTK feature, similar to Free42 is *not* planned for RPN83P, mostly because the memory management functionality of the underlying TIOS seems too primitive to implement this reasonably, and because I don't find an infinite stack to be particularly useful in an RPN system)
    
• new MODE > RSIZ: resize the storage registers, supports 25 to 100 registers
  • NOTE: This is called SIZE on an HP-42S (and Free42), but I have always found this to be confusing because there are other "SIZE" commands: WSIZ (word size), SSIZ (stack size), and RSIZ (register size). I named this RSIZ to avoid that confusion.
  • On RPN83P, the WSIZ, SSIZ, and RSIZ commands all behave exactly the same. They prompt for the size value. And there exist the corresponding WSZ?, SSZ? and RSZ? functions to retrieve the current values.
    
• extract the 13 STAT registers (R11-R23) into their own separate set of registers (using a new TIOS appVar named RPN83STA)
  • all storage registers R00-R99 are now available for end-users, with no conflicts with the STAT functions
  • add new STAT > SIGMA folder: contains functions to retrieve each of the 13 STAT registers (e.g. SigmaX, SigmaX2), following the convention used by the Plus42 app
    
• add new RPN stack operators
  • "2ND u" button (above the 7 button): implement the Rup (RollUp) function on the keypad. This seems to be an important function when the RPN stack size is increased beyond 4. (I could not think of any better alternative button to bind the Rup functionality. You can think of the "u" as a mnemonic for "up")
  • STK > DUP menu function: duplicate X (similar to ENTER, without the complicated logic with "disable stack lift")
  • STK > DROP menu function: delete X
  • (the DUP and DROP functions are more relevant for keystroke programming, but these functions were already implemented internally, so I decided to just expose them in the UI with only a handful lines of code)
    
• update storage format of various appVars (RPN83REG, RPN83STK, RPN83STA) to allow future migrations without losing data
  

If you have made it this far in this post, you have the opportunity to send me feedback about the various UI/UX changes by installing the preview version of RPN83P (v0.11.0-dev) from here: https://github.com/bxparks/rpn83p/releas...0.11.0-dev . I would appreciate such feedback, before I spend ~2 weeks updating most of the screenshots of my various documents.

WARNING: v0.11.0-dev changes the storage format of the RPN stack and storage registers. They will be cleared if you install and run the new version of RPN83P.