newRPL: How about dual soft menus?

[Didier Lachieze]

(09-08-2014 05:59 PM)Claudio L. Wrote:  Here's some food for thought about the UI for newRPL which is about to enter development phase. Feel free to comment.

Basic idea:
[list]
[*] Permanent VARS menu on keys F1-F6. Works as usual except the NXT key needs to be relocated (reasons will follow). For now let's say HIST becomes NXT for the VARS menu. This menu cannot be changed or removed, it's always showing vars in the curent directory.
[*] The keys APPS, MODE, TOOL, VAR, STO and NXT become a second soft menu, this one will change the way we are used to, and can even be defined as a custom menu. APPS, MODE, TOOLS are not used often, so they can go somewhere else as a shifted key. VAR is no longer needed, since the VAR menu is now permanent. STO needs to be moved, I propose SYMB, which will in turn be moved somewhere else shifted (all menus should be shifted keys (APPS, SYMB, MTH, etc), only keys that are used all the time should be unshifted). [...]

Interesting idea but as you start reshuffling the key functions on the 50g keyboard, does it mean that we'll need an overlay as for the 34S? And to make room for the second soft menu, at the end of the reshuffling does it mean that some functions on the keyboard will have to move away?

I like the idea of newRPL as being an alternate firmware for the 50g with the possibility of moving back to the original one. But if we start to redefine the keyboard layout it looks more as the design of a new product (think of the 34S vs.the 30b), which in my mind is a very different approach.