I don't understand the HP-50g, what am I missing?

[cdmackay]

I find it easier to think of each menu as just an arbitrary collection of items, i.e. a layout, rather than part of a strict hierarchical design.

Menus (layouts) can contain pointers to other menus, variables, commands, etc.

They are just convenient groupings of these things. i.e. a command may appear in multiple menus.

There are often many different ways to get to the same underlying object.

Some menus are triggered by a key press. That's just one way to display a menu.

Each menu has a number. That can be used with the MENU command, to display any menu (e.g. within a program). Or manually, e.g. <<96 MENU>> shows the STAT menu from the HP48.

The 50g also knows about many of the menu layouts from the HP48G-series, and they can be accessed via their menu numbers, using the MENU command.

e.g.

0 MENU # last menu, also ↰+PREV
1 # CST custom menu
2 # VAR
30 # HP48 "white menu" solver
63 # MODES
74 # HP48 solver, also ↱+NUM.SLV
81 # PLOT
93 # HP48 SYMB
94 # HP48 TIME, also ↱+TIME
96 # HP48 STAT
104 # HP48 I/O
110 # HP48 LIBRARY
2269 # lots of goodies library 221 Meta Kernel commands (2269 == 221+2048)

libraries < 256 are accessed via: 2048+#lib MENU
libraries ≥ 256 are accessed via: #lib MENU



So stop trying to make logical sense of the existing menu hierarchies, and just accept them as a partly-historical backwards-compatible mismash of lots of different ways to get to various related collections of underlying objects, e.g. vars, commands, etc.


What works for me is to make notes of the underlying objects (e.g. commands) that I use often, along with one (or more) ways to get to them, e.g. one of several menus. The AUR gives a menu path for every command, often the shortest menu path.

e.g. from my notes:

RCLKEYS ↰+MODE KEYS shows current key assignments


===

Note, in the above, I use + to indicate holding down. e.g. ↰+MODE means hold-down left shift and press MODE, then release both.

Whereas ↰MODE would mean press left-shift, release, then press MODE.

e.g:

⬇️ EDITB
↰⬇️ EDIT obj, VISIT 'name'
↰+⬇️ EDITB obj, VISITB 'name'