DM42 News

[Thomas Okken]

(02-02-2017 08:44 PM)Guenter Schink Wrote:  Although I'm not all affiliated with SwissMicros I had the privilege to present the DM42P prototype at the last HHC at Ft. Collins. As I had very good support from Michael in preparing my talk I think I've got a fair idea what their objective is. They will NOT start all-over from scratch. Specifically the potential alpha input capabilities where very well received by the attendants of that meeting. There were no objections at all in principle. Just the "M" at the ENTER was challenged. This was the overall reaction of those who could put their hands on it:

Fair enough, but people responding to a presentation don't have a lot of time to really think things through. Compare the enthusiasm at political rallies vs. the dry, boring, and annoying reality of policy analysis and unintended consequences. They're both relevant.

(02-02-2017 08:44 PM)Guenter Schink Wrote:  SwissMicros has gone a long way since and I believe they will not refrain from their principle approach of alpha access. Therefore the question, we may discuss even if it may not change anything, is how to get most out of it without making it overly complicated. Please don't exaggerate one addition of long press to " Long, half, double, triple and multiquadruple taps and presses" that doesn't help seriously.

I think that was hyperbole.

(02-02-2017 08:44 PM)Guenter Schink Wrote:  If you ever had that device in your hand you'd recognized that the keyboard is not at all cluttered by the addition of the alpha characters.

The HP-41 keyboard doesn't look cluttered, but that's partly because some functionality is simply not shown, and instead appears on the back. The situation with the HP-42S is different, as in "worse," because you also want lowercase letters to be type-able, and that means an additional 21 characters that need to be accommodated somehow. Since the 42S actually has fewer keys than the 41, and you need to keep ENTER, <-, up, down, EXIT, and R/S free of character assignments, something has to give, which is what this whole discussion is about. The digits, arithmetic symbols, ASTO/ARCL, %, pi, etc., suddenly have no place... If this were easy, we wouldn't be arguing for so long!

(02-02-2017 08:44 PM)Guenter Schink Wrote:  And the normal operation of the calculator is not affected at all by the additional characters.

And your alpha menu structure is still available if you prefer to use endless keystrokes to enter alpha characters.

More hyperbole.

(02-02-2017 08:44 PM)Guenter Schink Wrote:  It is SM's decision not to build a one to one clone of the HP42P, rather than exploit what modern microcontrollers, memory and screens offer while maintaining a reasonable compatibility with the HP42S by using Free42 as a basis. The large screen is not primarily intended to be used for fancy graphics, but to provide better overview of the stack, your programs and "printed" output.

Of course operating this calc should be as intuitive as possible. But that doesn't necessary imply that it has to exactly behave the same as the HP42S. For the time beeing, there are no "hidden" characters planned. All alpha characters are readily visible on the keyboard. My earlier proposal to add ({[]}) invisible to the first row is just that, my biased proposal.

Although I believe that long presses of ENTER and R/S wouldn't be a real annoyance compared to the underlying benefits, I will support the idea not to attach alpha characters to them. EXIT wasn't affected at all.

In my opinion the layout Massimo showed us is a good base except that the "?" should be taken off from the R/S key at least to honour the input of the author of Free42

Günter

I sincerely hope that no one compromises the integrity of their design because of my input, just because I happen to be the author of Free42. If my input makes sense, take it to heart, and if it doesn't, don't.