Are the latest 50g cheaply made?

[HP67]

(06-06-2014 11:33 AM)Claudio L. Wrote:  Do you mind putting those changes in writing? We are creating newRPL to improve on the 50g, so if you have good improvement ideas, we want to hear of them.

Hi. I have mentioned some of them in various discussions and threads and so have a few other members. I don't have a complete list off the top of my head right now. A lot of it has to do with not having important functions on unshifted keys and usually it's a change from the 48 where the 48 got it right and the 50g couldn't leave well enough alone.

For example most of us use the PRG menu regularly yet it has to be shifted. If you want the stack menu you have to assign it to a user key or shift PRG then STACK. And whatever you do assign it to a user key it doesn't work inside << >> which is a terrible PITA. There is a long path to get to a lot of stuff that used to be one key or one shifted key away. Everything on the 50g seems to have added 1 or 2 levels of indirection. The device is faster, but using it can actually be slower. There's also the issue of having to use the tool menu to get to PURGE but the tool menu won't display in the middle of entering something. Annoying!

Another thing that's really annoying is the loss of some left shifted menus, for me TIME in particular, since I use it a lot. But it's true of other menus also. And the APPS menu specifically but really all the menus ought to be available as soft menus. The choose boxes have gotten out of control. It's really ugly to see a bizarre collection of choose boxes and soft menus even though you set the soft menu flag. This doesn't seem to have been thought out that thoroughly.

The MODE, TOOL, and HIST keys are a total waste of an unshifted hardware key. They should have used them for MTH, PRG and STACK menus. The single quote key is in the wrong place, so is the tiny ENTER key that should have been large, etc. NXT is also awkward if you use a 48 and a 50g. I don't see they had a whole lot of choice there but it feels like it should have been where TOOL is now. Lots of niggling hardware and interface usability issues. The date display is silly and bizarre. Lots of small annoyances that make a 48 nicer to use unless you're actually running a big piece of code or need a sharp display.

As far as RPL itself since I guess that is what you are looking at specifically I would like to see BREAK/EXIT and ITERATE/CYCLE/CONTINUE statements added but like the Fortran versions, not C's typically broken/confusing version. Other than that, I think RPL is pretty fantastic and doesn't need significant changes but I am pretty new to RPL and don't know how much I don't know yet.

I'd like to see a macro recording facility to help you write a piece of code by allowing you to record keystrokes as you work out a problem, allow you to undo and/or back up some arbitrary number of steps, and then save the whole session as an User or SYS RPL program. That would speed on-device development greatly. I'd like for the debugger to allow you to NOP instructions while debugging.

I'm sure if you open a thread you can get a lot more suggestions.