WP43 News

[dlachieze]

Some questions/issues about strings:

1. if you enter a string in program mode, you start with f α, then you enter your string, but how do you exit from alpha mode to enter the next step?
   • f α is entering the Square root symbol
   • Pressing ENTER exits from Alpha mode, but adds an ENTER instruction on the next step
   • Pressing EXIT exits from program mode
2. if you have a string in X then VIEW X overlaps the string in X instead of displaying it on the top row
3. if you VIEW a string longer than the space available on the top row, the missing part is not displayed on the second row
4. if you have a program running with a VIEW instruction executed, then R/S or EXIT don't stop the program. You have to press these keys twice.
5. is it possible to have a version of VIEW not showing the register name before the string (like the dispensable AVIEW)? when you just want to display some messages to the user during program execution you don't want to show where the message string is located.

[Walter]

Some answers:

1. Press [ENTER] and [<-] for the time being. That's only two keystrokes. I'll check if we can do with [ENTER] alone in the future.
2. Not observed here. What exactly did you do?
3. I observe other weird things in this case. Will take a look to VIEW for longer texts.
4. Not checked yet.
5. Use RCL instead. E.g. put your message text into R12. Then, within your program, enter two steps: RCL 12 and PAUSE 15 for displaying your message text for 1.5 seconds.

[dlachieze]

Some answers:

• 1. Press [ENTER] and [<-] for the time being. That's only two keystrokes. I'll check if we can do with [ENTER] alone in the future.

It's three keystrokes because currently to delete ENTER you have to go one step up.
But why EXIT is directly exiting from the program mode and not from AIM?

• 2. Not observed here. What exactly did you do?

I was building a string in X and then viewing it with VIEW X. Here is the result:

VIEW_X.png (3 KiB) Viewed 2173 times

• 5. Use RCL instead. E.g. put your message text into R12. Then, within your program, enter two steps: RCL 12 and PAUSE 15 for displaying your message text for 1.5 seconds.

This is not an exact replacement for AVIEW because you have to stop the program to display the message and it's for a limited time. You cannot have a message displayed during program execution.

[Walter]

1. It's a matter of priorities. Please see the Owner's Manual, p. 315. Maybe we can change the order.

2. That's what I observe for a long string. A short one is displayed correctly.

5. A message will always be displayed for a limited time, at least that's what I hope. Seriously, we could think about a system flag
suppressing the indication of the source at VIEW for people like you. But I'll wait for five more people requesting this.

[dlachieze]

1. It's a matter of priorities. Please see the Owner's Manual, p. 315. Maybe we can change the order.

The current priority is a bit weird: you enter the Program Mode with [f] [P/R] then you enter the AIM mode with [f] [α], so I would expect EXIT to do the reverse: first press exit AIM, second press exit program mode.

5. A message will always be displayed for a limited time, at least that's what I hope. Seriously, we could think about a system flag
suppressing the indication of the source at VIEW for people like you. But I'll wait for five more people requesting this.

It would be nice to have a way to display a message during program execution as you may want to inform the user of the program status during a long run program. Anybody else having the same need?

[akaTB]

It would be nice to have a way to display a message during program execution as you may want to inform the user of the program status during a long run program. Anybody else having the same need?

Yes (on other calculators) I used to display messages this way.

[PierreMengisen]

It would be nice to have a way to display a message during program execution as you may want to inform the user of the program status during a long run program. Anybody else having the same need?

Yes (on other calculators) I used to display messages this way.

+1 (user friendly behaviour)

[Walter]

Release 0.21.6 is here https://gitlab.com/Over_score/wp43s/-/releases. This is mainly for bugfixes:

1. Input of an alphanumeric constant is terminated by ENTER, though this ENTER won't appear in the program anymore.
2. RCL+ Y works as advertized now.
3. Also functions with a heading E are handled properly in equations now.
4. You can enter π as imaginary part of a complex number now without a subsequent automatic ENTER.

And we changed the spec at some points:

• Local flags are 00 - 99 and A - E. More lettered flags would not be in line and hard to access.
• The system flag ALPHA is user settable now.

For this release, the manuals were not updated.

Included in the release package is everything you may want to try, test, and check the 43S on your computer or your DM42. Please look into the Reference Manual, App. E and F for how to do this.

Enjoy!

If you have any questions, don't hesitate to ask early. And if you discover anything suboptimal unknown yet, please report. There are certainly some issues - who finds one will get 14 test points.

[rprosperi]

It would be nice to have a way to display a message during program execution as you may want to inform the user of the program status during a long run program. Anybody else having the same need?

Yes (on other calculators) I used to display messages this way.

1 + . Having this seems like a fundamental requirement for a machine like the 43S. In the good old days when folks were simply calculating numbers to solve Engineering or Physics problems, the speed of the 43S would make this virtually unnecessary, but these days folks have lots of reasons to think up problems (which typically have no real world significance) which need programs to run for many minutes and even hours, so such status messages are quite useful, e.g. displaying which iteration some big loop is on, or the size of the last found Prime, etc.

[dlachieze]

Release 0.21.6 is here https://gitlab.com/Over_score/wp43s/-/releases. This is mainly for bugfixes:

Thanks for the new release !

Some comments (edited to remove a comment about terminating strings with ENTER in non program mode, I still have some troubles to fully understand the logic of string entry termination in program/non program mode between ENTER and EXIT):

1. In program mode if you enter instructions referring to Variables such as STO 'MyVar' or VIEW 'MyVar' they are inserted ABOVE the current step and not AFTER as with any other instructions (STO X or VIEW X are correctly inserted after the current step)
2. KEYG and KEYX expect to have the key label in K so when you want to define a soft key you need to do for example:

   Code: Select all

   'MyKey'
   STO K
   DROP
   KEY 01 GTO 01

   It would be better for KEYG and KEYX to get the key label from X and to do the drop automatically
3. Also when entering the key you want to define you are supposed to be able to press one of the 18 softkeys available but it's not possible, you have to enter the key number instead:

   

   KEYG.png (76.37 KiB) Viewed 1987 times