newRPL: How about dual soft menus?

[rprosperi]

(09-08-2014 05:59 PM)Claudio L. Wrote:  Here's some food for thought about the UI for newRPL which is about to enter development phase. Feel free to comment.

Basic idea:

• Permanent VARS menu on keys F1-F6. Works as usual except the NXT key needs to be relocated (reasons will follow). For now let's say HIST becomes NXT for the VARS menu. This menu cannot be changed or removed, it's always showing vars in the curent directory.
• The keys APPS, MODE, TOOL, VAR, STO and NXT become a second soft menu, this one will change the way we are used to, and can even be defined as a custom menu. APPS, MODE, TOOLS are not used often, so they can go somewhere else as a shifted key. VAR is no longer needed, since the VAR menu is now permanent. STO needs to be moved, I propose SYMB, which will in turn be moved somewhere else shifted (all menus should be shifted keys (APPS, SYMB, MTH, etc), only keys that are used all the time should be unshifted). To avoid using one more key, the NXT key becomes NXT for this menu, only if the menu has more than 6 items. If it has exactly 6, NXT performs the sixth menu function.
• The softmenu on the screen should mimic what's on the keyboard, so there will be 3 rows, top row with 6 items for the VARS menu, and two rows of 3 items for the other menu. The space to the right becomes the status area. The screen layout can have the stack on top, softmenus at the bottom, and status area at bottom right.
• The second soft menu could be hidden from screen or shown at will, with a key press, to increase space for the stack (long keypress somewhere is a good candidate to switch on/off the menu).
  

I think I threw this idea before, but not officially. Here it is for real, and whatever you suggest may end up being implemented.

Claudio

Some interesting ideas to improve the 50g keyboard. I think it would be easier for most folks to grasp with an image (does not have to be picture-perfect, even ascii art would get it across) as I think there are too many changes to keep in mind all at once while one test-drives the new layout. As the author, its probably intuitive to you, but I had to read it about 4 times to follow. Just a suggestion.