DB48X: HP48-like RPL implementation for DM42

[c3d]

(07-21-2023 11:07 AM)LinusSch Wrote:  

(07-19-2023 12:41 PM)Claudio L. Wrote:  We should try and coordinate (standardize?) these extensions to RPL so as to minimize differences between dialects.

Please do! The two of you are the saviors of all who rely on RPL.

Wow. Thanks. But no pressure! ;-)

Quote: Diverging would be damaging, keeping it interoperable enables us to have as many options as possible for hardware to run RPL on going forward. Which helps us all. I think I speak for all of us when I say that we would be very very grateful if you can keep your two systems as compatible as possible.

In practice, this will be difficult without a spec to refer to. For the moment, I am trying to stick to what is described in the HP50G advanced reference manual. But there are interesting divergences with newRPL already. Claudio just pointed to ADD vs. + for list concatenation. It turns out that in my implementation, ADD and + produce the same opcode, and that's "sort of" to address that issue.

We could consider a given reference implementation as the spec (e.g. HP48 or HP50), but that limits extensions. As an example, GET in newRPL can extract a character from a text object. That seems useful, and not really getting in the way of source code compatibility with HP RPL. So I plan to implement that. As a matter of fact, I am using the newRPL help file as another reference point.

Quote:I'd like to help out with this effort specifically, if I can, I'd very much like both of these projects to have continued success. I don't have hardware to run DB48x yet (planning on a DM32 after Christmas) but I do have one 50g running newRPL and one stock. I have not used newRPL much yet. I also have somewhat limited time, don't we all, but I should be able to set up the emulators next month.

I really need to buy a 50g to run it. Right now, I can only run it in emulation. Good enough for most cases.

In any case, thanks a lot for the proposal. What about starting with some kind of unified help file that we could use as a basis for documentation (and to document differences between variants if necessary)?

Claudio, I am not sure if you ever noticed the work I did for the DM42 on newRPL?
https://github.com/c3d/db48x/tree/dm42

This is a massive series of changes, many of which you are likely to not like. One major change in particular was regarding the graphic engine and automated layout of the various UI elements. The idea being to be able to display things easily at different locations for the DM42, the 50G and the prime, because their function keys are at different spots.

   

Another big change I made which you might want to consider at some point is refactoring the help system to use a markdown file based on the HTML documentation. This is what I use on the DM42 for now, but most of the work is done for newRPL (but, again, not necessarily in a state you would be happy to merge)

   

In any case, I realize these are really invasive changes, and you are unlikely to ever merge them, but you might want to try them out at least in the simulator.