NEWS: TI-Nspire CX II CAS

[compsystems]

Will it include the Python language, logo (turtle) app, a more powerful CAS (Simplification level control), a better user interface (I/O cmds Dialog Boxes)?

Source:
https://education.ti.com/en/products/cal...-cx-ii-cas
https://tiplanet.org/forum/viewtopic.php...69#p238707

[Maximilian Hohmann]

Hello!

(01-17-2019 12:49 AM)compsystems Wrote:  Will it include the Python language, a more powerful CAS, a better user interface?

From what I read in the article (the layout of that website gives me the equivalent of "eye cancer" by the way - one used to see that kind of stuff in the early days of the internet...) the main difference is the shift to another processor, the same as the HP Prime. Apart from that there are no major differences, the most obvious being the white colour of the non-CAS model and the blue border of the CAS variant.

The prototype units from which these informations were gathered came from a trading show last Septemper (half a year ago!), probaly stolen there and later sold on eBay, so the soon to be released production units may have a completely different software. The prototypes all have the 8-year old software of the current nSpire CX. We will have to wait and see!

Regards
Max

[Adriweb]

(01-17-2019 01:11 PM)Maximilian Hohmann Wrote:  the layout of that website gives me the equivalent of "eye cancer" by the way - one used to see that kind of stuff in the early days of the internet...)

We do welcome any feedback/suggestions etc Note however that the look is quite customizable, you can toggle the chat, the sidebar, etc. It's also quite responsive, and there's a mobile version as well. So I guess we're left with colors and such? I'd welcome a screenshot of what you see though, because even the article is pretty cleanly layouted for me.

(01-17-2019 01:11 PM)Maximilian Hohmann Wrote:  the main difference is the shift to another processor, the same as the HP Prime.

That is just a theory - we have only seen eBay photos and can just imagine what TI did for those upcoming models, hence it'd be logical that they use a newer CPU etc. which could be similar to the HP Prime. I guess we'll see in a few months.

(01-17-2019 01:11 PM)Maximilian Hohmann Wrote:  The prototypes all have the 8-year old software of the current nSpire CX.

No - what the photos show is OS 4.5, which is the current latest (from late 2017) on the CX models (which were launched in 2011, but have undergone at least around 30 hardware revisions over time, as of mid 2018). Anyway the evidence points to the fact that it's just case design show units, with the PCB inside just being old ones.

[Maximilian Hohmann]

Hello!

(01-17-2019 02:03 PM)Adriweb Wrote:  We do welcome any feedback/suggestions etc Note however that the look is quite customizable, you can toggle the chat, the sidebar, etc. It's also quite responsive, and there's a mobile version as well. So I guess we're left with colors and such? I'd welcome a screenshot of what you see though, because even the article is pretty cleanly layouted for me.

This is what I get when I follow the link in the first posting:



As I am not registered to your site this must be the default view. There are half a dozen different fonts in as many different sizes and even worse, all the colours of the rainbow. Some black on white, some white on grey, and again some "one colour on a different colour" in all possible combinations that fit on one browser page. Then there is a row of big iconised function buttons on the top and lots and lots of minuscule ones under the author's name. Compare that to HP-Museum website and forum!

I guess I'm a little spoilt because at work I am used to a very clean and concise presentation of important information in an easily understood fashion (thanks to generations of man-machine-interface designers who refined that to the current level).

By the way: On the iPad the presentation is almost perfect. Only the posting itself is displayed (without all the frames around) in uniform font and style. Nice to look at and easy to read.

(01-17-2019 02:03 PM)Adriweb Wrote:  No - what the photos show is OS 4.5, which is the current latest (from late 2017) on the CX models (who were launched in 2011, but have undergone at least around 30 hardware revisions over time, as of mid 2018). Anyway the evidence points to the fact that it's just case design show units, with the PCB inside just being old ones.

Ah, OK. But the differences between the different versions over the life span of the nSpire CX (my son had one at school and I only occasionally played with it a little) are not very obvious to the casual user. Nothing like a change from BASIC to Python...

Regards
Max

[Adriweb]

(01-17-2019 02:39 PM)Maximilian Hohmann Wrote:  As I am not registered to your site this must be the default view.

Yes, looks almost good to me (as in, it's the almost expected look). You can use the little (-) buttons at the corner of blocks to toggle them, it'll be saved for other pages you'll visit.
I see some overlaps and bad widths and minor stuff that I don't have, but yeah, it varies a bit depending on OSes and browsers (for instance, I know some font sizes look weird on Firefox and on Linux)

(01-17-2019 02:39 PM)Maximilian Hohmann Wrote:  There are half a dozen different fonts

Yeah, same regarding the OS/browser differences (but not as much). For instance, I try to use the nice looking default system fonts on the main content), but at some point it was really a mess and believe it or not it's much better now than years ago But I could do even more fonts cleanup. I'll try soon, but we'll see...

(01-17-2019 02:39 PM)Maximilian Hohmann Wrote:  in as many different sizes and even worse, all the colours of the rainbow. Some black on white, some white on grey, and again some "one colour on a different colour" in all possible combinations that fit on one browser page. Then there is a row of big iconised function buttons on the top and lots and lots of minuscule ones under the author's name.

That's quite true (well, especially for the sizes), but is also something made deliberately. Simple: as one may guess, the smaller it is, the less important. I believe the main content's sizes and colors are appropriate and consistent across all the forum etc. I have to say that some of the CSS suboptimal (in)consistencies are due to the fact that the original stuff are 10+ years old, and we underwent some slow transitions on newer frameworks, but old stuff remained and it's not actually that easy to fix as a whole. For instance, I'd love to just use Bootstrap css cleanly everywhere, but meh - not so easy.

(01-17-2019 02:39 PM)Maximilian Hohmann Wrote:  Compare that to HP-Museum website and forum!

Wait, are you talking about the http://www.hpmuseum.org/ home page? Because that has be a good example of a 90s website that didn't change since then and sure as heck looks very bad these days xD Looks like someone forgot to make the CSS and chose random background colors for divs (and I'm not going to talk about the lack of HTTPS, which should be a given these times)! But anyway, that's my opinion
About the forum, yes, it is clean, but "too much" for me. If we wanted just text, almost no colors nor fancy layouts and stuff, might as well just use email/BBs. But that's probably because I prefer phpBB to MyBB, regarding the layout and such. But anyway, it's also a choice - the forum part here is *just* a forum. On TI-Planet we blend the "content/tools" part and "forum" part together so that users don't have to switch from one context to the other, hence the sidebar and menu bar always present, providing useful shortcuts etc.

(01-17-2019 02:39 PM)Maximilian Hohmann Wrote:  On the iPad the presentation is almost perfect. Only the posting itself is displayed (without all the frames around) in uniform font and style. Nice to look at and easy to read.

Well sure, but quite a bit of the content is gone too. We want to be able to provide all the content on desktop, not a limited one like on mobile devices - which is why we have sidebars and such there
But again, if you don't want/like them, we made them togglable (the left one also gets hidden automatically if the screen is too small), so in the end everyone should be happy with their choices, we aren't forcing one or the other.

________________________________________________________________________________​_____________
Woops, haven't we gone a bit too much out of topic there Anyway, I'll see if I can adjust a few little things here and there, but in the meantime let's get back to the calc

(01-17-2019 02:03 PM)Adriweb Wrote:  But the differences between the different versions over the life span of the nSpire CX (my son had one at school and I only occasionally played with it a little) are not very obvious to the casual user. Nothing like a change from BASIC to Python...

Well, you're talking about software differences, while I mentioned hardware revisions
For software updates, we have official (and unofficial, as in, community-based) changelogs. For hardware, only community-based ones (which I find annoying, I've said it multiple times to TI that it would also be very nice to know what got improved etc...)

[toml_12953]

(01-17-2019 12:49 AM)compsystems Wrote:  Will it include the Python language, a more powerful CAS, a better user interface?

Most likely not. You'll have to add Ndless and MicroPython just as you can do now.

http://ndless.me/

[Adriweb]

(01-18-2019 02:47 AM)toml_12953 Wrote:  

(01-17-2019 12:49 AM)compsystems Wrote:  Will it include the Python language, a more powerful CAS, a better user interface?

Most likely not. You'll have to add Ndless and MicroPython just as you can do now.

Well, we know nothing about the OS so far, and last time a new OS came with a new model (so, 3.0 with the CX), Lua was added. Maybe we'll get Python this time? (Remember, Python is the big thing in France at least, and TI's market share in France is quite important... so who knows)
I guess we'll see soon when it'll get announced officially

[Eddie W. Shore]

This is one to watch out for. I have several generations of the TI-Nspire, and confession: I really have not used them very much. I'll need to get back into it. Of course, the blue border around the CAS CX has my attention.

Will this be followed by a TI-84 Plus CE 2.0 (TI-84 Plus Squared): hopefully with the graph taking the entire screen for starters and including a differential equation graphing mode and a custom menu like the TI-85/86?

[Don Shepherd]

(01-19-2019 05:05 PM)Eddie W. Shore Wrote:  This is one to watch out for. I have several generations of the TI-Nspire, and confession: I really have not used them very much. I'll need to get back into it. Of course, the blue border around the CAS CX has my attention.

Will this be followed by a TI-84 Plus CE 2.0 (TI-84 Plus Squared): hopefully with the graph taking the entire screen for starters and including a differential equation graphing mode and a custom menu like the TI-85/86?

Hi Eddie. I haven't used my NSpire CAS for many years, just not into it anymore. Too busy playing with my HP-65's and 17b's.

Re: TI-84 Plus CE 2.0, I would be surprised to see any changes. As Wally said in a Dilbert cartoon, "nobody jumps off a winning racehorse."

Don

[Eddie W. Shore]

(01-19-2019 09:50 PM)Don Shepherd Wrote:  Hi Eddie. I haven't used my NSpire CAS for many years, just not into it anymore. Too busy playing with my HP-65's and 17b's.

Re: TI-84 Plus CE 2.0, I would be surprised to see any changes. As Wally said in a Dilbert cartoon, "nobody jumps off a winning racehorse."

Don

Same situation with me, Don.

As far as the TI-84 Plus, I'd agree. Also, how did the TI-84 Plus go over a decade without built-in base conversions and logic operations?

Eddie

[Don Shepherd]

(01-21-2019 01:16 PM)Eddie W. Shore Wrote:  how did the TI-84 Plus go over a decade without built-in base conversions and logic operations?

Eddie

Are you saying that the current TI-84 Plus CE has base conversions? Not the CE I have, which I bought a few years ago.

TI is naturally hesitant to change their cash cow in any way. Look at days-between-dates (dbd); year range = 1950-2049. I guess they don't worry about expanding that range since probably very few folks use that function.

[Eddie W. Shore]

(01-21-2019 02:15 PM)Don Shepherd Wrote:  

(01-21-2019 01:16 PM)Eddie W. Shore Wrote:  how did the TI-84 Plus go over a decade without built-in base conversions and logic operations?

Eddie

Are you saying that the current TI-84 Plus CE has base conversions? Not the CE I have, which I bought a few years ago.

TI is naturally hesitant to change their cash cow in any way. Look at days-between-dates (dbd); year range = 1950-2049. I guess they don't worry about expanding that range since probably very few folks use that function.

No, the TI-84 (and the TI-81/82/83/84 family) never had base conversions. Also good point on the dbd function.

[compsystems]

New info https://tiplanet.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=238986

12 years to reincorporate the graphic commands (pixel) ~TI68K calcs, I do not know if dialog boxes cmds were included

[ijabbott]

It would be nice if they could add a touch screen. I hate that touchpad!

[compsystems]

deSolve wizard



Source: https://education.ti.com/en/products/cal...-cx-ii-cas

[toml_12953]

I notice the TI-Basic in the Nspire II now has all the usual graphics (set point, reset point, draw lines, circles, etc.) commands. The Nspire's Basic didn't have any. I may pick up one of these when they're available just to benchmark it.