newRPL - Updated to build 1510 [official build remains at 1487]

[Claudio L.]

(05-06-2021 05:19 PM)spiff72 Wrote:  We're u thinking the layout would look like this? I wonder if the color screen could be used for differentiation between the inner and outer menus?

Yes, exactly like that. It would make it easier to find the key that goes with the item, but then you have the menus split in half, I don't know how that will impact the usefulness (having let's say Vars to the left and right, then a menu in the inner columns in my head will make it confusing to use the vars menu. Right now I have the menus grouped together to the left (as in the picture), and I find it confusing. If you use touch there's no confusion at all, but I'm a bit hard-headed into using physical keys for at least one menu.
Of course, the 50g layout was ideal, but that's perhaps because I've been using it for so many years.

Another thought was to have the menus with 5 options only, and display 2 items on the leftmost and rightmost columns, and 3 on the inner columns. Then we would assign 5 physical keys to each menu (menu 1 on the left, menu 2 to the right of the cursors). But it was too many keys lost for the menus (just to be clear, the idea was to have Apps, Home, Symb, Plot and Num for Menu 1, and the keys on the other side for Menu 2).
Also, having menus with 5 items per page messes with the organization of the menus, then developers would need to create menus for a 5-item configuration and different menus for the 6-item config.
It wouldn't be good for interoperability between calc models which is a constraint that I personally imposed on newRPL and I'm not ready to let go. If you create a program for newRPL, it MUST run with no changes on all hardware platforms.