43s status

[rprosperi]

(01-01-2015 09:35 PM)Gene Wrote:  The operators in the 2nd column looks most un-natural to me. IMO, they should be on the right ala HP 41 style if you have the column of keys on the left ala HP 42S style as shown.

And this is a very strong dislike. On a scale of 1 to 10 where 1 is my favorite and 10 is a TI-1200, this is a 9. Ugh, again IMO. :-)

Strongly agree, which is also consistent with virtually all Pioneers.

Decorum and Robert's rules of order prevent me from comparing the proposed layout of the operators to something as frightening as a TI-1200, but since Gene already did, Yeah! Damn.

(01-01-2015 09:55 PM)Bit Wrote:  Having labels on those keys wouldn't prevent the documentation from using the sensible method you described. Nor would it prevent anyone, who knows what they're doing, from understanding that "TRIG g ACOSH" means push e.g. F4 once in the TRIG menu. But if they're confused and you're trying to help, it's useful if you can simply tell them it's F4, rather than having to say something like "the third unlabeled key from the right in the top row". If there are no labels on the keys, people will come up with ad-hoc and inconsistent names whenever there's a practical need to refer to a physical key instead of a soft function.

I also agree with Bit's comments. Having labels will allow unambiguous references to specific fixed keys, regardles of the current display (e.g. to invoke diagnostics menus, reset or similar non-modal functions); I've no strong preference for which labels are printed (F1 vs M1, etc.) but lean towards F1-F6). That said, I also agree with Eric that all documentation referring to functionality should indeed use the label shown in the LCD bit-map for that function such as the "ACOSH" in the example, which is clear to even new users, and also allows for s/w updates which could move an item, without needing documentation updates.