utf-8 for RPL source code

[Claudio L.]

(04-23-2015 11:00 PM)Helix Wrote:  I still have some questions:

We have already 6 and 7 height fonts in the HP50g. Is it possible to reuse these fonts, or do you prefer entirely different fonts? (I'm afraid of the answer…)

Yes, the fonts on the 50g are good, but monospaced. Letters like I are too wide, W or M too narrow, etc. Other than that, the style is good and could be copied, but I'm not sure about copyright issues with HP (have these fonts been released with a permissive license by HP?).

(04-23-2015 11:00 PM)Helix Wrote:  Is it possible that the last line of the font is not entirely blank, and used by some characters like p, q, y? I suppose yes…

Yes, but remember that it will "touch" the letters below, so it has to be used only when strictly necessary (like p,q, etc.). As long as it looks good anything goes.

(04-23-2015 11:00 PM)Helix Wrote:  You don't plan to include an 8 height font? It's a pity, because I find this size of font very easy to read.

Nothing is set in stone, this is an open source project. I said 5, 6 and 7 because I like more information on-screen at once, and considered this as the bare minimum for the system. But newRPL is not for me, it's for everyone, so if you like 8 or 10 pixel fonts, and put the effort to create them, then by all means they can be included, either in ROM (if there's room left) or as a user-loadable font.

(04-23-2015 11:00 PM)Helix Wrote:  I've seen some of you earlier posts, with the description of the three rows of soft menus. They consume a lot of space! I'm not sure I would prefer this disposition. I like very much the actual display arrangement of the HP50g. I have reassigned the HIST key for recalling the last menu, and it's enough for my (modest) needs. But of course, it's not my project, and I'm not aware of all the possibilities that you envision.

It's not as bad as you think. Here, you can see a picture of how it looks on screen. The 2 additional rows don't steal space from your stack, but from the status area, which is now reduced and to the right of the menu (in the picture, the "Memory cleared" message is in the status area).
Lately I've been thinking that the HIST key (or any other) can hide/show the status area (and therefore the second soft menu) upon long-press, to clear even more space if you don't mind not having your variables menu.
Right now this lower area is also used for pop-up error messages. For example, if you press + with only one number in the stack, the 50g opens the error as a pop-up window, it beeps, and you have to press ON to continue working. newRPL shows the pop-up error on top of the second soft-menu and covering the status area (full-width of the screen), for 5 seconds and then disappears. During these 5 seconds, you keep working, no need to press ON or any key, so errors never slow you down (this should be configurable, so errors while the screen is unattended don't just vanish).
So this area takes no more space than on the 50g, and has much more importance, being used simultaneously for status area, error popups and a second soft menu.