RPN Tutorial in retro style

[hansklav]

Thanks for your replies.

(07-20-2014 11:24 AM)peacecalc Wrote:  (…) But I've the impression it would be more cleary if you show parallel with the example calculations (first column) that what is happen internally (second column) (similar to appendix A) . Maybe that support a steeper learning success, and you don't need appendix A any longer.

I hesitate to do that. Because I tried to explain the basics of RPN without too much reference to the stack (for didactical reasons). Most HP Manuals treat the details of the stack in an appendix. But maybe a limited explanation of the workings of the stack early in the tutorial would be good. I'll think about it.

(07-20-2014 12:48 PM)r. pienne Wrote:  (…) Just one thing popped out at me though. In the paragraph "What is the correct way to calculate 6 : 2 × (1 + 2) ?" a colon is used throughout to represent division, which I have never seen before. Was that deliberate?

It was. To be more "impartial", to emphasize that the problem is not due to the use of a certain symbol, I deliberately used the colon division symbol here to use a symbol different from those used by Casio and TI (who use ÷ and / ).

I must admit that I did not expect to be this symbol completely unknown as a division symbol in certain parts of the world! In The Netherlands, just like in most countries of continental Europe, this is the symbol with which everybody learns to do division in primary school. I think this is mainly due to Leibniz, who was the first to use it both for ratio and division (which can be read here).

(07-20-2014 03:57 PM)walter b Wrote:  (…) I started reading it - and wanted to do it using the pdf since I prefer pages (being still younger than the library of Alexandria where they had their texts written on papyrus rolls). Trying that I came across two minor things which reduce my reading fun:

1. The symbol used for "minus" is significantly wider than the other ones which looks suboptimal.

True. Fixed that.

(07-20-2014 03:57 PM)walter b Wrote:  

The pdf appears on just one (!) extra-long page which takes extreme times for loading and makes it quite difficult to read. *Right now, accessing the pdf doesn't work at all anymore for me. Tried on two different systems.* Both may be caused by my OS (Win 7) which, however, is not as exotic

I suspect that is a problem of my hosting provider, because it is only a small file (529 KB). I have the same problem when loading it from the website (using Mac OS X), but not when loading it from a local hard disk. Maybe just pressing "reload" (F5 on Windows) helps.

(07-20-2014 03:57 PM)walter b Wrote:  (…) so I guess there may be more people out there appreciating an improved design. If, however, the problem is in front of my laptop, I'd be grateful for advice. TIA.

I made the Tutorial as a web page (using only HTML and CSS) and at the moment the .pdf is just a copy of the web page (for the internet generation that will be no problem ;-). In the future (when the Tutorial will be finished) I will produce a paged .pdf, but because that is not easy (for me) that will have to wait a little bit. Just try to read the web page, which will always have the most recent version. But today I also updated the (one-page) .pdf.

(07-20-2014 03:57 PM)walter b Wrote:  (…)
P.S.: Not sure about the fonts you used for the key labels. Personally, I think Luiz Vieira's KeySet4 font of 2004 is a good choice returning all key labels in consistent size.

I just use a Sans-Serif font and CSS for the keys. After your reply I tried to find the KeySet4 font, but the links on the Forum do not work anymore. I will contact Vieira and try the font.

(07-20-2014 03:57 PM)walter b Wrote:  P.P.S.: You claim you wrote your tutorial based on the layout of the HP-35 but want to write a generic tutorial for all RPN calcs. You write, however, f LASTx, f x^2, and f x! (with f standing for the golden shift key). I don't quite understand why. Maybe I've missed something.

I changed the 'example' shift key to the golden shift key everywhere. Think the golden shift key is the most generic shift key on HP calculators.

(07-20-2014 03:57 PM)walter b Wrote:  - I concur with your statements written in Appendix E.

I'm glad you do!

Hans