newRPL: proposal for Alpha mode

[Claudio L.]

(10-11-2015 10:41 PM)Helix Wrote:  I'm reactivating this thread to post my thoughts about the alpha mode in the current newRPL firmware.
I'm not sure it's an improvement compared to the 50g. I would say it's different, but not better. In fact, I still don't like the fact that the Alpha key activates the last used mode (capital or lower case letters). I'd prefer by far capital letters at the beginning.

That can easily be accommodated.
The new alpha was not intended as an improvement, more of a reorganization, where the alpha key takes care of most functions that relate to alpha mode, and the shifts are left for other functions (more math related).

(10-11-2015 10:41 PM)Helix Wrote:  In program or algebraic modes, is there a need to switch to the direct mode? I think it would be preferable here that the right shift ENTRY just toggles between algebraic and program modes, like in the 50g.

I'm not sure so I cycled through all modes, but that can easily be changed as well.

(10-11-2015 10:41 PM)Helix Wrote:  I've been thinking about Greek letters too. The proposal in the first post seems too complex for me.
The suggestion with the long press and cycling procedure as described above could be interesting. Another more conventional solution would be to simply use the left shift and right shift keys to enter lower case and capital Greek letters. This would be independent of the current alpha mode (capital or lower case letters).These characters are mainly used in mathematics and physics (apart from Greek users…), where we generally need only one character at once, and a direct access is important here, avoiding a mess of key presses.

The same is valid for underscripts and superscripts, which should be independent of the current alpha mode. So for example, in any alpha mode:
* pressing and holding the left shift key, and then pressing 0..9 would enter a subscript
* pressing and holding the right shift key, and pressing 0..9 would enter a superscript
I'm not sure that making the left shift key available for new uses is very interesting.

I mostly agree, I scraped the Greek mode idea a long time ago. The only reason why the subscript/superscript numbers are the way they are now is because I was trying to keep some symbols in their traditional places, right-shift+number has a lot of symbols, some of which are actually printed on the keyboard (0 and 3), so moving symbols around could be a problem. I always find myself that shift and shift-hold are very easily confused, especially when I type fast, I tend to release the shift too late and do a shift-hold, so for those commonly used symbols, having them as shift AND shift-hold is important (example: the right arrow, commonly used in programming).
Are we willing to move infinity, # and the right arrow to get uniformity on the subscripts/superscripts?