HP 49/50 interactive stack bug

[Vincent Weber]

Hi all,

The 49/50 manual states that the EDIT menu entry in interactive stack mode triggers EDITB ("Best"), but it does not. It does trigger EDIT instead, so it seems that there is no easy way to edit a stack equation item in EQW.

The 48 has the same behaviour, but at least, when you press VIEW, you can switch to EQW by pressing ON. In the 49/50 viewer, pressing ON just exits the viewer.

And the 48 Metakernel allows shift modifiers on the INFO menu entry to trigger EDITB and VISITB. On the 49/50, which is supposed to have all the metakernel features, strange enough, you can use left shift on the VIEW entry to trigger VISITB (I'm not even sure this is documented) , but no way to trigger EDITB.

I am quite puzzled that this was never reported as a bug and corrected over the years. Any reason for this?

Also, it seems that the VISIT options have gone down over the years. On the 48SX, you could simply use VISIT on a stack level number in normal stack mode. On the 48GX, you had to use level+1 and enter the interactive stack, much less intuitive. On the 49/50, it seems that this possibility is just totally gone, everthing I tried failed.

I would be grateful if somebody could explain to me the rationale for this behaviour, which I find rather strange.

Many thanks and best regards,

Vincent

[Joe Horn]

(08-05-2024 12:30 AM)Vincent Weber Wrote:  The 49/50 manual states that the EDIT menu entry in interactive stack mode triggers EDITB ("Best"), but it does not.

Where does the documentation say this? I looked, and failed to find that in the documentation. The AUR does say that "Pressing [EDIT] performs EDITB" (page G3) but that's referring to the TOOL menu, not the interactive stack menu.

Just in case there is any confusion, "interactive stack mode" is entered by pressing either the HIST key or the up-arrow key. Its menu is different than the TOOL menu, whose EDIT softkey does perform EDITB.

By the way, the easiest way to execute EDITB on the 50g is to press and hold down the left-shift key, then press the down-arrow key. All such non-obvious keystroke shortcuts are listed in the 50g AUR, appendix G.

(08-05-2024 12:30 AM)Vincent Weber Wrote:  Also, it seems that the VISIT options have gone down over the years. On the 48SX, you could simply use VISIT on a stack level number in normal stack mode. On the 48GX, you had to use level+1 and enter the interactive stack, much less intuitive. On the 49/50, it seems that this possibility is just totally gone, everthing I tried failed.

On the 48G/GX, VISIT is most easily executed by pressing left-shift EDIT.

On the 50g, VISIT is most easily executed by pressing left-shift down-arrow.

[Vincent Weber]

Hi Joe,

Page E-8 of the 49G user guide, the section reads "Interactive stack commands" , and EDIT is said to open the best environment, i.e the matrix editor if the pointer stack entry is a matrix. Which is just not what happens.

I am well aware of the difference between interactive stack mode and normal stack mode, and how the 48GX handles VISIT. I was not talking about visiting a named object (all calculators do fine in this department) but about visiting a stack element based on its index. On the 48SX you could enter 3 on the stack, then VISIT would visit stack entry number 3. On the 48GX, for the same result, you need to put 4 (not 3) on the stack, then enter the interactive stack mode, then press right shift + EDIT (which reads "CMD"). Quite less intuitive. On the 49/50, it seems this feature is completely gone. At least I have never found a way to do it, but I would be happy to be proven wrong.

By the way, on the 50G, EDITB is performed directly with down arrow. Left shift + down arrow performs VISIT on a name (EDIT on anything else) , and holding left shift + down arrow performs VISITB on a name (EDITB on anything else).

Best regards,

Vincent

[Vincent Weber]

The only way I could find to use EQW in the interactive stack is highly cumbersome.

Since "EDIT" does not trigger "EDITB" as it should, but just "EDIT" which activates the command line mode, once there, you go to the end of the command line (2 keystrokes), press "END" (2 keystrokes) to validate the entire command line as the selection, and the press NEXT then EDIT (2 keystrokes), which will actually trigger EDITB on the selection, that means the entire entry.

6 keystrokes that could have been easily avoided!!

At least, since EDIT, VISIT, EDIT, VISITB are programmable, for the normal stack mode, a simple User RPL program can reproduce the early 48SX behaviour: given a stack index, EDIT (or even VISIT) the item corresponding to the index...