DM-42 and WP-43S

[efroymson]

I would argue that fixing the build system is the single most important job. For one thing, it would allow end users of the calculator to program it in native code. Given the really beautiful multiline display, and the dedicated row of blank keys at the top, the customization possibilities would be fantastic, even without changing the keyboard on the DM-42 at all.

I suppose that some programming of calculators is done "on the fly", but I suspect most of it is done in advance, for a particular purpose. The advantage of a programmable calculator is more its portability and customizability than its programmability per se.

The work done on the WP34S would not be at all wasted, as much of the code could become part of a great library of routines to be included or not as desired by the end user.

I suppose that to really make this work, the codebase would have to be merged with that of Free42, which is maybe impractical. And perhaps I'm suggesting too much overloading of the "Custom" menu (and the "setup" menu, the purpose of which is not clear to me now, except that Top.Fcn is redundant).

Possibly some people who have actual use cases for their calculator should chime in here. I was an embedded systems engineer for several years, so the idea of coding, building, and downloading custom firmware is quite natural to me. Others may not like the idea of having to use an IDE to program their calculator -- though again, this would only augment, not replace, the ability to do classic keystroke programming.

Just my 2 cents ...

(02-26-2017 12:33 AM)emece67 Wrote:  

(02-25-2017 05:01 AM)Paul Dale Wrote:  Needless to say, the build system is a bit of a mess. Target builds can only happen under Windows with a specific version of a specific ARM compiler, the other compilers we've tried generate broken code.

Yagarto 4.6.0. I learnt it the hard way.