DM42 News

[Dave Britten]

(01-31-2017 09:07 PM)jch Wrote:  

(01-31-2017 12:13 PM)Dave Britten Wrote:  Possible compromise: a submenu within the alpha menu that switches the keys into various modes: lowercase, numeric, Greek, etc.

1 +

And to ramble further as to how it might work, suppose the normal behavior is exactly the same as a 42S: no direct alpha input, with all the digits, AENTER, ASTO, ARCL, etc. being mapped exactly as they were originally.

But add a new final page to the Alpha soft menu with menu items that enable the direct input modes, which can then quickly be reached via Shift, Alpha, Up Arrow:

A, a, SYMB, GREEK, ...

Press one of those, and a little bullet appears next to it, like toggling options in the MODES menu (DEG, RAD, GRAD, for example), indicating that particular key plane is now active. Or press the selection that's already active (or maybe ON/EXIT) to disable all of them, and switch back to 42S-style input. And maybe add an option in MODES so that pressing Alpha goes to that page by default and automatically activates A (uppercase characters).

I know a soft-menu full of shift keys sounds like some kind of insane HP 67 fever dream, but I think it could work here.