HP Prime single line of text input question

[Bill Triplett]

On the HP Prime, I am looking for the way around this simple user interface problem. In the attached picture, I used a function which returned a real number result. The result of 0.6252853728 is now sitting at the bottom of the recent history.

Now, I want to use the keyboard, not the mouse. I am much faster and more accurate when typing using keyboard buttons. I use keyboard shortcuts when using either the actual calculator or the PC keyboard when using the PC simulator.

I want to do something that should be very simple. Now, I want to enter 120, press the divide button, and then select the recent number from the history as the denominator. I know this is easy with the touch screen, but I am not always using the touch screen version of the machine. I frequently use the PC simulation of the HP Prime on a PC with a standard monitor.

It turns out, it is not simple to highlight that recent number - without first moving the cursor away from the denominator.

Press the up arrow, and the cursor goes directly up into the numerator before another press of the up arrow moves the highlight to the desired number in the history.

Now, if I press Enter the desired (and highlighted) number does NOT teleport into the denominator. Instead, it is inserted between the 1 and the 20 in the numerator, of all places.

This seems to be an artifact of being in pretty print mode all the time. Is there a way to make the machine display only a single line of text in the input region? In that way, a single press of the up arrow would jump directly into the history region.

I know that when using the actual physical calculator keyboard, I can press the Shift key before pressing the up arrow on the click disk. This skips over the numerator. Then, I need to press the down arrow to select the desired number.

Over on the PC keyboard, the PC keys marked Shift do not function as calculator Shift keys, so on the PC simulator we press the CTRL key to do the same thing, if we remember.

All of that is nice, and can be made to work, but I would prefer to switch the calculator into a single line text input mode when doing many similar tasks. I think it would be simpler to manage.

Bill