[34S] Proposal for Entry RPN mode with dynamic stack

[Paul Dale]

(02-20-2015 02:23 AM)BarryMead Wrote:  I know what Paul is saying. It is the "odd-ball cases throughout the code" that make this a complex issue.

It probably isn't all that bad if you decide to replace the current stack behaviour with something else entirely. Trying to support both the old and something new together will be quite difficult, I certainly wouldn't attempt to modify the code base to handle both.


Much of the current behaviour was defined by decisions made by HP in severely memory limited times. E.g Σ+ puts the number of samples in X and disables stack lift and leaves Y unchanged. This was a reasonable idea when this function was first introduced in the 1970's but it really doesn't make a lot of sense now -- just show the number of samples in the display, pop both X and Y and save both with an undo or restore function of some kind.


Stack lift really is a legacy of the 1970's. So is LastX.


The big question is, how could it be done better today?


- Pauli