Plus42 Equations, Preview Release

[Thomas Okken]

(04-30-2022 07:27 PM)jonmoore Wrote:  Also, I noticed that the softkey buttons replicate the original top row of Free42 when not in a soft menu subset. This made sense on Free42 but you've added a new top row to Plus42 so logically, the soft keys should duplicate this new top row. Another (IMO) better option, would allow the user to customise the default functions of these softkeys in the preferences. There's no need for labels as most people will be able to memorise their 6 default functions on the soft keys. And this would ideally be separate to the 'Custom' user soft key settings that are available via the original HP42s customise approach. In effect, you'll be providing 12 custom soft keys - which can only be a good thing.

While I don't agree that "logically the soft keys should duplicate the new top row," I can understand that the way the menu keys behave when there's no menu can be a bit surprising.

The explanation lies in the way the two new keyboard rows were added. Despite what it looks like, the two new rows are not the first and second rows, but the second and third. The new rows are mapped to functions using "direct command mapping," a Free42 feature that lets a skin layout define custom keys that don't press a sequence of virtual calculator keys, but instead activate a function directly, the function being specified by name in the layout.

So the top row of the Plus42 skin really is the top row of the HP-42S keyboard, and performs those functions when there is no menu.

I don't think this is particularly useful behavior, but then again I don't think replicating the second row would be any better. Personally, when there is no menu, I don't touch the top row at all, so I don't care what it does while in that state. They might as well all perform NULL as far as I'm concerned.

I think the best suggestion I've come across so far is to add an option for a permanent CUSTOM menu. I have looked at the DM42 patch for this feature, and I have decided to implement this in Plus42 as well – just not in 1.0. Details are still to be worked out, I'm thinking of a different and somewhat cleaner implementation, but it will be a bit messy in places regardless of how it is done, so I ruled it out from 1.0, since even my initial set of features ended up taking longer to implement than I had expected.