Hi dlachieze,
Sorry ... my posting was unclear ...
Currently we ar able to put 44 character of any size onto the screen via the Alpha register (and I think it is only possible,
if not in graphics mode - that is with the stack displayed also).
One way to enhance capability of the DM42 to display results of programs would be the "Thomas way": To do a kind of I/O redirection and
print onto the screen instead via IR. But since this is also the "Free42 way" (THIS IS BY NO MEANS ANY KIND OF CRITISM, THOMAS!
) we will
only get HP42s-compatible things printed...including the more than neccessary complicated way to copy the two-line contents of the HP42s compatible part of the LCD ... to the LCD. Especially when plotting more than one function onto the screen this, everything becomes even more complicated.
BUT: For debugging (that is: pure textual ouput) purposes this may become handy.
A way to mix multiple plots AND textual output in sequence onto the screen would be:
1) Allow to OR pixels into the screen for text as for the PIXEL command
2) Dont surround text with a white border (or even better: Make that configurable via a Virtual Variable).
3) For horizontal positioning of text use LF and for the horizontal offset use <space>.
4) To prepare text to be put onto the screen use the alpha register.
5) Use the usual alpha-register related commands to print text to the screen instead onto the printer via IR.
Since the maximum count of characters of text one would want to print onto the screen would be:
Only characters and spaces for the whole screen in the smallest available size ... this would be the
maximum number of characters the alpha register should be able to store.
I think we need the following "items":
Redirectable family of print commands: Output via IR or to the screen.
To switch that, we need a Virtual Variable...say "PrintDev" 0: printer (default) 1: screen
Resizable Alpha register.
To configure that, we need a Virtual Variable...say "ARegSiz" 0: 44 char (default) <num>: size of the register
I am sure, I forgot something...if I will be sure, what it is, I will post again...
Cheers
Meino