Multiplication Poll: * or · or something else?

[Manolo Sobrino]

(03-08-2014 11:33 PM)Tim Wessman Wrote:  Anyone who is even being remotely honest will admit that the 50g is not easy to learn for the majority of potential users, and things can go wrong frequently that even advanced users take time to understand and resolve.

I'm glad you see things that way. The problem with awesome mazes is that they're still mazes.

Now, there is something that has always puzzled me about the Prime. Is it really necessary to give the user the option to use giac in console mode? I never got that being modal by having two CLI in such a device could be considered a desirable feature.

You could just leave the HOME view as the unique interface and remove the "CAS." prefix for the giac functions. You could always send any command to giac by parsing it before and even keep the giac console under the hood for some kind of special programming mode. With this you don't really need to write a giac RPN version any more. Of course this would mean leaving the HOME vars undefined, or having to declare some as symbolic first, but I think many users would be grateful for not having two kinds of variables. The CAS key could still be used to load the relevant CAS soft menus, replacing that functionality from the toolbox key... And you might disable any CAS access just like now.

Maybe you don't realise, but if a user doesn't get what's really going on (and it is far from obvious) being given all the options becomes really confusing.