newRPL: proposal for Alpha mode

[Claudio L.]

(04-30-2015 11:28 PM)Helix Wrote:  Stupid question: why C, and not U?

Ehhhhhh... I have no idea. C for capitals, I guess. There's no reason why it cannot be U.
This idea comes from the ZX Spectrum, in which the cursor was a blinking letter that changed according to context. L was lowercase, C for capitals, K for tokens, E for extended mode, and G for graphics mode, if my memory doesn't fail me. Why it was L and C and not C and S, or U and L, I have no idea. You'd have to ask Sir Clive Sinclair.
If anyone is interested, here it can be tested immediately. It starts in token mode K, but after the first token (just press J for example to get the LOAD command) it switches to L. Shift-2 toggles L and C, Ctrl-Shift goes into E mode for additional commands, and Shift-9 goes into G mode.
I always thought it was very clever to show information exactly where the eyes of the user are (at the cursor), rather than some indicator somewhere else.

(04-30-2015 11:28 PM)Helix Wrote:  

Quote:[*]Pressing and holding Alpha with other keys will temporarily toggle L/C (G/g) mode until released (this basically moves the left-shift functionality to the Alpha key) for the letter keys, may have other uses for other keys, for example for the numbers could insert subscript numbers, like A₁

I don't understand this sentence (English is not my mother tongue). Could you reword it?

Neither is mine, let me try that again.
The idea is that if you are let's say in programming mode, and you want to type the letter T for a variable name, instead of pressing Alpha to switch to alpha mode, then T, then Alpha again to be back in programming mode, you press and hold Alpha, then press T.
When you release both keys you are back in programming mode. If you want to type MYVAR while in programming mode, just keep Alpha pressed while you press M, then Y, etc... and when you release alpha, you are back in programming mode. It's harder to explain than it is to do it.

(04-30-2015 11:28 PM)Helix Wrote:  For the subscripts, I was thinking about a long press on the final key. For example, pressing the 1 key a second or so, would change the standard character to the subscript position. I can even imagine that continuing pressing that key would cycle through the various characters: standard – subscript –superscript – standard … and so on, until the key is released at the desired status.

(This feature could also be used elsewhere, to choose among several actions, provided that there is a visible change in the display, or a changing indicator is displayed. I'm thinking about the way digital watches work with only a few buttons, and a systematic usage of the long press to do the various choices and adjustments.)

Now this is an interesting idea. The keyboard driver right now doesn't support this, but it could be modified to issue a repeating long-press. This is interesting for several UI elements like combo boxes where you could cycle between elements.
For the numbers I'm not sure it would work well, because there's a conflict with the repeat feature on the keyboard. When you press and hold the number 1 you expect 11111111111111111111111..., rather than cycling sub/super/normal, but perhaps in some shifted plane it could work.