WP-32S in 2016?

[emece67]

(01-07-2016 02:54 PM)walter b Wrote:  Like each and every piece of (fairly) good design, it's almost self-explanatory. And you've got a further advantage: you know some RPN calcs already. As usual, comments, remarks, proposals for improvement, etc. are most welcome.

Thanks for the job, it is always good to have a starting point, even more if it is as good as this proposal. I suppose all we will have a feeling of its preferred layout, mine will have:

• Trigs with direct access from the keyboard (for me this is a must)
• x=? and x!=? tests removed from direct access and placed in a menu, but
• SF & CF with direct access from the keyboard (this can be neglected if there is no flag affecting the mode of operation, think on the A & D flags).
• DROP with direct access from the keyboard (I use it much more than RDN)
• DEG, RAD, GRAD removed from direct access and placed in a menu
• VIEW placed in a menu
• The nice // operator in the keyboard (that's the XY/(X+Y) thing EE people use)
• An easy way to deal with hexa numbers (I'm not sure if in your layout the {E, F} digits are in the {+/-, 7} keys or in the {->, CPX} ones. I think I prefer the later)
• The +/- key labeled CHS
• x^2 in the keyboard
• CL[Sigma] can be in a menu
• Can STATUS, INFO and MEM be combined into a single menu?
• Same with CLOCK & STOPW?
• Same with MODES & DISP?
• Same with FLAGS & TESTS?
• Same with LOOPS & P.FCN? (I rarely use the PGM functions, not because I do not program, but because I prefer to do it in a computer with a compiler)
• What the DSP key is for?
• How do you enter the alpha mode?
• PI can be placed in a shifted key
• If D.MS is in the keyboard, then D.d should
• Greek letters not shown
  

Yes, a big list, but as I said, all we will have a preferred layout according to the way we use the machine.

(01-08-2016 06:27 AM)Paul Dale Wrote:  Another question for the community is what extra functions would be desirable?

Bessel functions of complex order and argument, Jacobi's elliptic functions, more statistical distributions, more programming features?
- Pauli

In no particular order:

• A complex ABS operator that returns a real number, not a complex one with zero imaginary part (put simply, a SQR(X^2+Y^2) operator)
• Functions to deal with polynomials as arrays of coefficients. Both real & complex coeffs must be supported. Functions for +, -, *, / (quotient & remainder), ^, composition, derivative, GCD, evaluation, get multiplicity of a root and from roots get coeffs
• Working Bessel functions of integer order for both real & complex arguments
• Operators like DSE & ISG that only increment/decrement the counter & do not perform the test (yes, I know I can write DSE NOP...)
• Built in complex solver
• Ability to compute the determinant of a complex matrix (the P->Z, Z->P transforms cannot do that)
• Eigenvalues/vectors
• I know this is not possible with such display but... a UNITS menu ala 48/49/50 (sorry, just dreaming)
• Built in TVM solver with AMORT
• If both SSIZE4 & SSIZE8 are supported, a test SSIZ4? (or SSIZ8?). I know of SSIZE?, but I find it clumsy to use
• An easy way to write user programs that behave like XROM ones (provide a mechanism similar to xIN/xOUT for user programs)
• Provide a mechanism for XROM programs to access locals of the calling program (not copying them, but directly accessing them)
• Allow xIN/xOUT programs to work not in DBL mode (in fact I've have patched the wp34s sources to work such way in my local builds)
• Allow XROM programs (not inside xIN/xOUT) to work in SSIZE8 mode (also patched in my local builds)
• Always work in DBL mode?
  

That's enough for now ;-)

Both are big lists, but think of it as a brainstorming, everybody can say anything, even nonsense.