Soft menus

[Djames]

Just got my prime .
Is there a way to add commands to the home soft menus keys . Like we could in the 42 48 50.
Seems to hard to get to commands we need to use.

[eried]

Give the touch screen a chance, the problem will fade away in a week of use and you will probably will want more touch gestures .

[Djames]

I don't think this is made for professional engineers/surveyors . I am pulling my hair out to do basic problems.. Converting angles . Seems it wants degree symbols etc to enter for conversion, all other hp you enter the deg.minsec , no special characters . Have not found rect to polar etc.

These use to be on the key board or at least be able to make a costume soft key menu. I will give it a chance but first impressions confusing.. Must be made for school kids. I think I wasted my money . I own a 41,48,15,50,49,33. So I guess I am an hp purest.

[eried]

It depends on what was your objective buying the Prime, if it was to replace all your legacy hp calculators: it was a waste of money.

I don't think it is purely oriented to kids, but for sure is intended to avoid the funny initial struggle people usually experience with an HP so they never ask to lend your calculator again (like with the 48s) ergo making you struggle with basic stuff

[The Shadow]

(01-11-2014 08:04 PM)eried Wrote:  It depends on what was your objective buying the Prime, if it was to replace all your legacy hp calculators: it was a waste of money.

So I'm curious: What objective would you recommend to avoid wasting money?

Because while the speed, power, and (drool) the graphing capabilities of the Prime are very tempting, I'm finding plenty of other things about it really off-putting. If I'm going to buy a new calculator, yeah, I want it to replace the 50g I've already got, just like it replaced my trusty 48SX when it finally gave out. (I had a 49 in between for a while, but the keyboard gave out almost overnight, so I don't count it.)

I'm not talking about the simple unfamiliarity of a new device. I'm talking about how the Prime seems to almost aggressively get in the way of simple operations.

Right now I'm considering holding onto the emulator as a cool graphing and statistics app and waiting for HP to come out with something more my speed.

Quote:I don't think it is purely oriented to kids, but for sure is intended to avoid the funny initial struggle people usually experience with an HP so they never ask to lend your calculator again (like with the 48s) ergo making you struggle with basic stuff :D

Heh heh heh. I confess to a certain malignant pleasure when people ask to borrow my calculator, yes. ;)

[Djames]

Just the same it seems HP ventured a bit from its roots . no worries I keep working with it.
What are the soft keys for if you can't assign commands to them ?

[eried]

For me anything with any openness worth it (not signed firmware, not mega obfuscated protocols), I was just saying buying the prime with solely the purpose of replacing the old hp rpn calculator you use and love it is a waste of money.

(01-11-2014 09:25 PM)Djames Wrote:  Just the same it seems HP ventured a bit from its roots . no worries I keep working with it.
What are the soft keys for if you can't assign commands to them ?

Which soft keys are you talking about?

[Dougggg]

in programs you can use soft keys with the DRAWMENU command along with the MOUSE command

[Djames]

The black touch screen keys. I should be able to assign functions to these in the home screen.

[eried]

I am not sure, probably not.

[Tim Wessman]

There is no way to do menus ala 48 series at this point.

To convert between rectangular and polar, use the angle key and it will toggle between the rectangular or polar representation (complex number form). There is no concept of 2d/3d vector at this point.

As I believe I saw you notice before, all angles in DMS form stay in DMS form and are directly useable with basic operations (+,-,/,*) and trig operations.

[d b]

(01-13-2014 05:50 PM)Tim Wessman Wrote:  all angles in DMS form stay in DMS form and are directly useable with basic operations (+,-,/,*) and trig operations.

Tim; That is a cool and useful feature. Thanks for doing it. Is it true in the case of polar to rectangular too?

[Tim Wessman]

Yes, the angular/rectangular format of the complex is a part of the object itself (as is the DMS format part of the real). So they are carried along and you don't have to remember "is this a hms formatted angle or decimal?" and similar things.

[Djames]

Thanks for clearing that up . That's a big help... Not having to convert the angles is a big upgrade. Nice functionality..

[Djames]

Is there a way to seperate the angle from the distance in the stack after the function (rectangular to polar) angle key ?

[cdodds]

ABS will return the distance, ARG will return the angle.