Custom Text Formatting (Previously: Getting long results in a program)

[komame]

(03-31-2024 05:54 PM)chromos Wrote:  I may be misremembering, but I think I read somewhere that the ICON command is deprecated and no longer recommended. Can someone confirm or deny this?

It all depends on the purpose for which you want to use it. If you simply want to store sprites in it in "read-only" mode (as was done in the early days of HP Prime), then it's obsolete. But what I showed is not for storing sprites; it's for using as a temporary graphics buffer that also works in "write" mode, and you can dynamically change it during program execution to avoid overwriting images currently stored in G0-G9.
For example, if you write a graphics library and use G9 as a buffer in it, then someone who uses this library in their program, where they also use G9 for other purposes specific to that program, will have a problem because your library will overwrite what they have in G9, and the program will not work correctly. By using ICON in "write" mode, you avoid such problems. It simply works as if you had additional buffers outside of G0-G9 that work very similarly, but you can have as many of them as you want.
When something is "deprecated", it means that its use is not recommended because there is another, better solution. However, in this case, there is no other solution that provides these capabilities, so using ICON is the only option in this regard.