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HP Prime bug tracker? - norlesh - 05-09-2014 01:48 PM

Is there an official bug repository/tracker somewhere for the Prime? [If not then why HP, why?] It would be nice to be able to know which bugs have been acknowledged and are being worked on for the firmware update - and which we will be waiting till hell freezes over to be resolved.

Seems if there getting us to beta test they could atleast fain interest in the results.


RE: HP Prime bug tracker? - Tim Wessman - 05-09-2014 02:16 PM

Quote: Is there an official bug repository/tracker somewhere for the Prime?

Yes...

Quote:It would be nice to be able to know which bugs have been acknowledged and are being worked on for the firmware update

...and here you have you answer as to why it is not public. HP does not allow this sort of thing as it is considered "future information". Think if something were flagged as "fixed" but for some reason was never released. IANAL, but it seems to me that in lawyer's eyes you've just opened up the company for a potential lawsuit. I am not a marketing person either, but I suspect there are many of them that think "acknowledging bugs" is akin to publicly shouting "our product is flawed and broken so don't buy it". You and I know that public tracking of issues doesn't scare off the people that want to know about those kinds of things, but again, HP considers stuff that like confidential.

At its heart, HP is still a hardware company. That is slowly changing, but the idea that the "software" is the product really has not taken over quite yet.


RE: HP Prime bug tracker? - toml_12953 - 05-09-2014 04:29 PM

(05-09-2014 02:16 PM)Tim Wessman Wrote:  ...and here you have you answer as to why it is not public. HP does not allow this sort of thing as it is considered "future information".

Say, Tim,
Do YOU get to see the list? If so, maybe you could tell us which bugs are NOT on it! Smile


RE: HP Prime bug tracker? - norlesh - 05-09-2014 04:48 PM

Hi Tim, thanks for introducing me to a new acronym - had to look that one up Smile

Seems to me from the marketing perspective it would look alot better to have a single place where the bugs could be logged and the developers seen to be doing something about it as apposed to having people posting the reports in random forums and then airing there frustrations that nothing seems to be getting done about them.

As for it being a case of 'hardware' or 'software' focus - To me the reason to buy a $200 calculator was for the integration of the software and hardware such as dedicated keys and the clarity of a purpose built interface for mathematics (yes I realize the pen and paper are meant for this - but to me nothing says math like a pocket calculator). For the same coin I could have got myself a dedicated tablet and set it up with a suite of math apps... Sure it wouldn't look as sexy as the Prime and it wouldn't have the dedicated keys [still with the onscreen keyboard I would atleast be able to freakin read them] but I'm pretty sure the software wouldn't be irking me as much as the Prime is at the moment.

[I purchased this realy cool looking watch at a market once, it had an alarm that flashed an RGB LED. At first I thought it was great untill I got it home and started to explore the modes only to discover that one of the buttons was incorrectly labeled on the screen print underneath the face {the term 'lost in translation' comes to mind}. Anyway I still figured out how to set all the functions and everything, and technicaly it still kept time, flashed rainbows on que and was completely functional - but that watch became dead to me the moment I realized it was so obviously flawed - now the watch only cost $15 so I got over it pretty much instant and now it just exists in a junk draw somewhere. I don't actually want to give up on the Prime, I'd like to eventually master it as a tool but without the bug fixes flowing it's really hard to love all those warts.]

Oh and IANAL either Smile but if Apple was able to deal with bug fixes by effectively saying 'don't worry about it, itll go away' then I'm sure HP lawyers would be able to get them out of an honest mistake.

// apologies if this response seems to have just trailed off into a rant.


RE: HP Prime bug tracker? - eried - 05-09-2014 05:55 PM

Something like this: http://www.aerotaskforce.com would be so useful, anyone knows a similar project to use? I asked the guy behind that one, but he told me it was all custom :/


RE: HP Prime bug tracker? - norlesh - 05-09-2014 08:40 PM

Eried: Public bug tracking solutions arent' hard to find i.e. such as these 9 open source solutions and I'm sure there are others - problem is somebody at HP has to want to work with the public.

Also Eried do you know if anybody has attempted/been succesful using PrimeComm with the Mono library under linux or mac?


RE: HP Prime bug tracker? - eried - 05-09-2014 09:12 PM

Yes but take a look into the one I posted, I know there are open source solutions but that one is specially good for the calculator. Public votes up/down, GUI images as part of the report.

PrimeComm is 100% compatible with mono, the thing that does not run is the HidLibrary (it should be reworked to use linux usb-hid stuff and scintilla wrapper needs to point to the linux version).


RE: HP Prime bug tracker? - norlesh - 05-09-2014 10:39 PM

(05-09-2014 09:12 PM)eried Wrote:  Yes but take a look into the one I posted, I know there are open source solutions but that one is specially good for the calculator. Public votes up/down, GUI images as part of the report.
Bugzilla has a voting system built in, as for the GUI images and report styling I believe that would be a matter of css and/or templating for whoever setup the server page... Anyway don't think theres much point putting any more mental effort into selecting the bug tracker software - about as useful as selecting color swatches for the interior design of a manned mars orbiter module {since they would both seem to have similar probabilities of happening at the moment}.

(05-09-2014 09:12 PM)eried Wrote:  PrimeComm is 100% compatible with mono, the thing that does not run is the HidLibrary (it should be reworked to use linux usb-hid stuff and scintilla wrapper needs to point to the linux version).

That's good to know that part of that solution is there - I finally converted my laptop over to Linux just this week so am on the lookout for a way to link the Prime for backups and such [assuming it ever gets relegated from its current toy status].


RE: HP Prime bug tracker? - debrouxl - 05-10-2014 06:34 AM

For communicating with a Prime from a computer running Windows, MacOS X or Linux, there's libhpcalcs: http://www.hpmuseum.org/forum/thread-52.html .
It's a derivative of the time-proven libti* family for doing the same thing with the TI-Z80, TI-68k and TI-Nspire series. libhpcalcs aims at doing one thing (communicating with the real and virtual calculator, implementing most supported operations, in a lightweight, portable and interoperable way, without dependencies on huge frameworks); however, it has no GUI, no program editor with built-in help, or any such advanced stuff Smile


RE: HP Prime bug tracker? - norlesh - 05-10-2014 08:44 AM

Thanks debrouxl looks like it will do everything I need in the short term - is there any capacity for doing firmware updates whenever they arrive? [I'm sure I can borrow a friends windoze to perform updates otherwise - if only the updates became so frequent that that was an inconvenience]


RE: HP Prime bug tracker? - debrouxl - 05-10-2014 10:12 AM

Nope, firmware upgrade capability is not implemented in libhpcalcs.
I partially documented it from USB packet dumps at http://tiplanet.org/hpwiki/index.php?title=HP_Prime/Linking_Protocol , but never got around to implementing it (which requires documenting it better in the first place, firmware reflashing is a sensitive operation), and nobody else did either Smile
Differential analysis on the dumps for firmware upgrades to the versions from August 2013, November 2013 and the next one should provide some clues.