A sweet little poll about the WP 31S layout

[Manolo Sobrino]

It is Walter's calculator, he wants LG so he gets LG, period. The nice thing about this calc is that it is GPLv3, so anybody can change whatever they want. There's no point in arguing about it. Some banter is fun, but I wouldn't take it too far.

The whole matter is funny. The designer/creator goes for a standard that no one is really using, because that is the very German right thing to do. And then people complain endlessly as if this were a design committee. Well, it is not.

You had the choice to vote for a layout with LOG, just 1/3 of voters did. Walter gave you the chance. I'm genuinely surprised he proposed having this poll: layout b) was just an exercise after all (see the other thread). Either he was really interested in the layout, or it was the easy way of legitimising his choices although he didn't have to! There's nothing bad with it.

I'm more surprised that no one is really thinking about the general idea behind these layouts. There haven't been any just scientific, non programmable HP calcs since the 31E, 32E. And those were 30-key calculators. This one has 37. The other comparable scientific is the 45, but then it has 3 rows of 5 keys and 5 rows of 4 keys.

The 20b/30b has 2 rows of 6 keys and 5 rows of 5 keys (and you can't change the ON position)... great, so now we can make it look like a 42S... Why? You guys haven't been using a just scientific with these settings. This is a new problem for a different use case and you can't see it (for instance, the prominent position of STO/RCL is arbitrary). IMO discussing these options would have been much more interesting than arguing about the O in LOG. It should be LOG10, BTW.

I'm done with this layout, if Walter wants it that way, so be it. I can assign keys, I can print a different one... I can even change other internal choices in mine(*). What's the problem?

(*) I've been thinking about more interesting things that %CH. I'd like to test a key that would give you the product of all the non zero numbers in the stack, or a key that would give you the sum of the squared numbers in the stack, the first one would change the way I use RPN, the second would be a handy macro.