DM42 News

[Thomas Okken]

(12-19-2017 07:58 PM)Logan Wrote:  I don't know if this is a bug or not, but on the original HP 42s when using the Alpha entry, you could hold down the shift the entire time and select lowercase characters without letting go. That doesn't seem to be the case with DM42 (or Free42 iOS), where it requires shift for each additional character.

As Bob suggested, that's because the touchscreens that Free42 was originally designed to work with were all single-touch, so it was impossible to press two or more keys at once, and so there was never a reason for Free42 to handle that scenario.

Now that we have multi-touch screens and the DM42, it would make more sense to support true HP-42S Shift behavior... but it hasn't been done yet, obviously, and I'm not making any promises if or when it will get done.

(12-19-2017 09:31 PM)rprosperi Wrote:  I too often find I am using the 'classic style' Alpha menu without thinking about it, I guess from years of using a real 42S. But in those years, I don't think I discovered the trick of holding down shift like this. I rarely used lower case Alpha except for certain output labels, specifically because it was a pain to use.

I think it's mentioned in the manual somewhere. I've known about this Shift behavior forever, but it's not something I discovered on my own. I must have either read it in the 42S manual, or else I read about this type of behavior on the HP-48G, and then got curious and started wondering if that might work on the 42S as well.

UPDATE: Yep, it's in the manual: page 37, under ALPHA Typing Tips.