Some assorted HP67/97 questions

[Dieter]

(06-08-2016 05:16 PM)PANAMATIK Wrote:  The Release 1.01 is ready for download HP-67 Emulator. I used the "Luiz font", it looks nice indeed.

Thank you very much, Bernhard. Here are a few remarks.

- After loading a program the focus stays on the "Load program" button so that the calculator does not react on the computer keyboard. Only pressing TAB twice helps.

- The emulator now supports a data section. Great. Data is also written by the "Save program" command. But the emulator does not seem to read it back correctly. It looks like it interprets the DATA section as additional program steps so that it e.g. reports a syntax error in "line 235" which contains a 10-digit number. #-)

- The decimal point only works with a period, not with a comma. This means that e.g. on a German keyboard Num-comma does not work. You cannot enter fractional numbers using the dedicated number block on the right. I think this deserves a fix.

- SST stills seems to have some problems. Sometimes multiple lines are executed, sometimes the key produces a R/S.

- SST/BST via the cursur keys obviously were not implemented. And I admit I do not like that R/S requires a shifted [=]. I'd prefer a much easier accessible key. My favourite is the space bar.

- The display looks a bit shifted to the left. Enter a negative number and the minus sign almost touches the left display border, while even a value that uses all 15 display positions has plenty of room to the left. I think it should be shifted by about half a character to the right.

- Didn't the -x- command (substitute for the HP97 PRTX) display X for a few seconds with a flashing decimal point ?-)

- The 67/97 card reader recorded (and restored) display format, trig mode and the flag settings. Do you think a short MODE section would be feasible ?-)

Dieter

[PANAMATIK]

Thanks for your remarks,

(06-08-2016 08:44 PM)Dieter Wrote:  - The emulator now supports a data section. Great. Data is also written by the "Save program" command. But the emulator does not seem to read it back correctly. It looks like it interprets the DATA section as additional program steps so that it e.g. reports a syntax error in "line 235" which contains a 10-digit number. #-)

Should be easy to fix. Perhaps I didn't test enough DATA sections.

(06-08-2016 08:44 PM)Dieter Wrote:  - The decimal point only works with a period, not with a comma. This means that e.g. on a German keyboard Num-comma does not work. You cannot enter fractional numbers using the dedicated number block on the right. I think this deserves a fix.

No problem for the next version.

(06-08-2016 08:44 PM)Dieter Wrote:  - SST stills seems to have some problems. Sometimes multiple lines are executed, sometimes the key produces a R/S.

Needs some research.

(06-08-2016 08:44 PM)Dieter Wrote:  - SST/BST via the cursur keys obviously were not implemented. And I admit I do not like that R/S requires a shifted [=]. I'd prefer a much easier accessible key. My favourite is the space bar.

Space bar will be included.

(06-08-2016 08:44 PM)Dieter Wrote:  - The display looks a bit shifted to the left. Enter a negative number and the minus sign almost touches the left display border, while even a value that uses all 15 display positions has plenty of room to the left. I think it should be shifted by about half a character to the right.

I had difficulties with the new font and different window sizes. Sometimes there was room sometimes not. But I will try to improve the display.

(06-08-2016 08:44 PM)Dieter Wrote:  - Didn't the -x- command (substitute for the HP97 PRTX) display X for a few seconds with a flashing decimal point ?-)

I remember, that I had the same problem with the first version of the HP-67E and fixed it. There will be hope to fix it in the PC version too.

(06-08-2016 08:44 PM)Dieter Wrote:  - The 67/97 card reader recorded (and restored) display format, trig mode and the flag settings. Do you think a short MODE section would be feasible ?-)

Maybe

Bernhard.

[rprosperi]

(06-08-2016 06:23 PM)Massimo Gnerucci Wrote:  There's no installation, hence you'll find the right font only if you already installed it... ;-)

Just download Luizfonts.zip, extract and install LEDcharset_class.TTF

Perfect, thanks Massimo. The numbers seem to have more authority in the 7-segment font, just the way HP and God intended (to quote JKH).

[PANAMATIK]

(06-08-2016 10:27 PM)rprosperi Wrote:  

(06-08-2016 06:23 PM)Massimo Gnerucci Wrote:  There's no installation, hence you'll find the right font only if you already installed it... ;-)

Just download Luizfonts.zip, extract and install LEDcharset_class.TTF

Perfect, thanks Massimo. The numbers seem to have more authority in the 7-segment font, just the way HP and God intended (to quote JKH).

Meanwhile the 7-segment font is part of the HP67Emulator.zip file. At least the download LuisFonts.zip can be omitted then. I realized, that the font will look even better in bold face. The next version will use bold face and comes tomorrow...

Bernhard

[Dieter]

(06-08-2016 09:32 PM)PANAMATIK Wrote:  Should be easy to fix. Perhaps I didn't test enough DATA sections.

You may try it with a sufficiently long program (200+ steps) and a set of non-zero registers.

(06-08-2016 08:44 PM)Dieter Wrote:  I had difficulties with the new font and different window sizes. Sometimes there was room sometimes not. But I will try to improve the display.

While we're at it: Maybe someone with the required skills and tools may modify the font file so that the centered period which is now mapped to the semicolon may be re-mapped to ...the period. This way different fonts could be used, and if the special LED classic font is not installed the emulator could default to its own one (the one of the very first version) without displaying Pi as a "3;14".

Another community effort could address the question of a decent image file. The larger JPG files that are now included seem to be simple upscaled versions of the original 200-pixel-wide image, so that they do not look as good as the emulator would deserve. ;-)

I am using the emulator with my own image file. It is an edited version of the quite nice HP67 picture (~350 pixels wide) that was included in Olivier's 67/97 emulator package. It is 345x700 pixels now and I think it fits perfectly (especially with your current emulator version). Since I do not know if any copyright restrictions apply I cannot post it here. But maybe someone can provide a scanned HP67 or a good photo (preferably in a studio setup) so that the emulator finally will look as nice as it works. ;-)

Dieter

[striegel]

(06-07-2016 10:16 PM)Dieter Wrote:  ... However, I'd prefer it somewhat bigger. 350x700 or 400x800 pixels are fine by me.
...

How about trying out the 340x708 and 680x1416 bitmap images provided here? I think the black labels on the fronts of the keys are more readable with these images.

The large one is quite a screenful on my portrait 22-inch monitor.

[Dieter]

(06-08-2016 11:38 PM)striegel Wrote:  How about trying out the 340x708 and 680x1416 bitmap images provided here? I think the black labels on the fronts of the keys are more readable with these images.

Hmmm... this looks remarkably similar to what I am using here with the emulator (cf. my previous post) Was it you who took these pictures?

The higher resolution of course has its advantages for editing. ;-) I cannot say more since the images can only be downloaded by registered Flickr users, but this is a good source. A slighty less tight crop would even be nicer since it would show the complete display and the HP logo at the bottom.

Dieter

[Massimo Gnerucci]

(06-08-2016 11:13 PM)PANAMATIK Wrote:  

(06-08-2016 10:27 PM)rprosperi Wrote:  Perfect, thanks Massimo. The numbers seem to have more authority in the 7-segment font, just the way HP and God intended (to quote JKH).

Meanwhile the 7-segment font is part of the HP67Emulator.zip file. At least the download LuisFonts.zip can be omitted then. I realized, that the font will look even better in bold face. The next version will use bold face and comes tomorrow...

Bernhard

Fine. I think you should credit Luiz in your documentation.

Thanks for all you did.

[PANAMATIK]

(06-09-2016 06:33 AM)Massimo Gnerucci Wrote:  Fine. I think you should credit Luiz in your documentation.

Thanks for all you did.

Of course, many thanks and credits to Luiz! I added to mention his 7-Segment font in the manual.

The HP-67 now detects whether the 7-Segment font is installed, and if not, uses the normal comma "," instead of ";" and small "d" for "Crd". So there is no need to change the font.

I think I fixed all bugs, DATA section should work now. Decimal point is blinking with -x- -STK-. And I changed some keyboard assignments, R/S is Space now. Arrow keys for SST and BST are not used, because BST is no button and this would violate the philosophy of a pure emulation without extras.

Thanks for your very welcome input for improvements

Bernhard

[Dieter]

(06-09-2016 09:39 AM)PANAMATIK Wrote:  I think I fixed all bugs, DATA section should work now.

Almost. ;-) There seem to be problems with small numbers, in my case 0.001 and 0.015. They display fine in FIX DSP 4, but in DSP 2 the 0.001 displays as "10.00", and so does the 0.015 in DSP 1 ("10.0"). This seems to happen as soon as the display would normally switch to SCI. So the DATA section seems to import some kind of ..."unnormalized" value. The current workround is scientific notation, i.e. with 1e-3 and 1.5e-2 in the DATA section everything works correctly.

(06-09-2016 09:39 AM)PANAMATIK Wrote:  Decimal point is blinking with -x- -STK-.

Great! This is the first time I see this on a 67. :-)

(06-09-2016 09:39 AM)PANAMATIK Wrote:  And I changed some keyboard assignments, R/S is Space now.

It seems that the emulator also reacts on pressing Shift, Caps Lock, Ctrl and Alt. They all seem to do a [R/S]. Even some other keys, e.g. M restarted the program, while after this I was not able to interrupt it. R/S seems to be a very special case.

BTW, what does the real 67 do when SST reaches a GSB statement? Does one SST run the complete subroutine as a whole and stop at the next line following the call, or does it walk through the subroutine step by step, like most other HPs? The emulator seems to do it once this way and once the other.

The number display now has very slighty moved to the right, but using my hp67.bmp file the black digit background now does not completely reach the right border. This was perfect in the previous version. I'll see if I can adjust my image file.

Finally let's not forget: thank you again for your great work on this emulator and all the recent bugfixes.

Dieter

[Gene]

(06-07-2016 05:21 AM)bshoring Wrote:  

(06-06-2016 04:44 PM)Gene Wrote:  What I'm hoping for is a good HP 65 iOS emulator. :-)

There is a very good one from Cuvée Software, for iPad only.
RPN-65.

Gene: What I'm hoping for in Cuvee's HP 67 emulator for iphone/ipad is the games library. They offer a couple of HP 67 application packs but not that one.

Guess I need to read up on how to save and then share user keyed programs as well.

[PANAMATIK]

(06-09-2016 01:32 PM)Dieter Wrote:  BTW, what does the real 67 do when SST reaches a GSB statement? Does one SST run the complete subroutine as a whole and stop at the next line following the call, or does it walk through the subroutine step by step, like most other HPs? The emulator seems to do it once this way and once the other.

Dieter

The original HP-67 executes the complete subroutine after SST. However if you press SST again, it will stop within the subroutine.

Bernhard

[PANAMATIK]

I just released emulators for the complete woodstock family!

HP-21 HP-22 HP-25 HP-27 HP-29

A new HP-67 version is also available, but still not the final version.

Bernhard

[Dieter]

(06-08-2016 11:38 PM)striegel Wrote:  How about trying out the 340x708 and 680x1416 bitmap images provided here? I think the black labels on the fronts of the keys are more readable with these images.

Meanwhile I managed to get hold of one of these pictures in a decent resolution. The only thing I do not like is the diffuse reflection on the display surface. So I replaced this portion by the display in Bernhard's pictures. Finally some fine-tuning was applied to match the correct target position for mouse clicks, and the brightness of the display background was slightly increased so that it better blends into the dark (not completely black) background of the digits. If the pictures on Flickr are yours and Bernhard also agrees I could provide a 345x700 version, which - for me - is just the right size. Slightly larger and of course smaller versions could be generated from this.

BTW, Bernhard: is it possible to get the red digits not on a nearly black background (seems to be RGB 25, 25, 20) but on a transparent one ?-)

Dieter

[Dieter]

(06-09-2016 06:33 PM)PANAMATIK Wrote:  I just released emulators for the complete woodstock family!
HP-21 HP-22 HP-25 HP-27 HP-29

Whooaa... great, an HP29 emulator!

I just downloaded the zip file and saw that the .exe has merely 47 KB. Is this the correct file size?
And HP67.exe also has just 62 KB.

Dieter

[PANAMATIK]

(06-09-2016 07:11 PM)Dieter Wrote:  Whooaa... great, an HP29 emulator!

I just downloaded the zip file and saw that the .exe has merely 47 KB. Is this the correct file size?
And HP67.exe also has just 62 KB.

Dieter

I made some optimization, the file size is correct.

Bernhard

[striegel]

(06-08-2016 11:59 PM)Dieter Wrote:  

(06-08-2016 11:38 PM)striegel Wrote:  How about trying out the 340x708 and 680x1416 bitmap images provided here? I think the black labels on the fronts of the keys are more readable with these images.

Hmmm... this looks remarkably similar to what I am using here with the emulator (cf. my previous post) Was it you who took these pictures?

The higher resolution of course has its advantages for editing. ;-) I cannot say more since the images can only be downloaded by registered Flickr users, but this is a good source. A slighty less tight crop would even be nicer since it would show the complete display and the HP logo at the bottom.

Dieter

No, I am not the photographer - I just tweaked and cropped what I had. That image has been one of my wallpapers. It probably originated with an HP shot from the Museum doc set.

[Dieter]

(06-09-2016 08:06 PM)PANAMATIK Wrote:  I made some optimization, the file size is correct.

OK, but what kind of optimizsation is this?

BTW the problem with small DATA values persists. A 0.001 read from the data section displays as 10 in DSP 0 and an 1/x takes at least a second before it returns a plain zero. So this must be a kind of non-standard value.

Dieter

[PANAMATIK]

(06-09-2016 08:33 PM)Dieter Wrote:  

(06-09-2016 08:06 PM)PANAMATIK Wrote:  I made some optimization, the file size is correct.

OK, but what kind of optimizsation is this?

BTW the problem with small DATA values persists. A 0.001 read from the data section displays as 10 in DSP 0 and an 1/x takes at least a second before it returns a plain zero. So this must be a kind of non-standard value.

Dieter

I did not yet address the small values problem yet, but I'm sure it will be done tomorrow.

Recall in mind, the real HP-67 had only 5k program size, the C# PC emulation has still more than 10 times this size after optimization. And I could reduce it still more. But I didn't really try to reduce size, I just replaced the built in calculator image from .bmp to .jpg, that reduced the executable size significantly.

Bernhard

[Dieter]

(06-09-2016 08:45 PM)PANAMATIK Wrote:  But I didn't really try to reduce size, I just replaced the built in calculator image from .bmp to .jpg, that reduced the executable size significantly.

Ah, OK. ;-) A 200x400 JPEG (i.e. 80000 pixels) with medium compression can be less than 30 KB while an uncompressed BMP is ~240 KB. This of course explains the size reduction, although I had not expected that the program itself could be so small. ;-)

Is PNG also possible? Both for the internal graphics and possibly an external hp67.png file? For images like these, this should be the better choise compared to JPG.

Dieter