Documentation about Hp50g / 49g+ / 48gII and wikis
#1

Maybe my questions are cyclic (i'm sorry but sometimes i don't have the right search words).

The first question:

What is the best reading list to learn how to master at least the built in functions of the hp 50g (and similar calculators like 49g+ and 48gII) ?

From my experience i can say:

1. the official user guide (the longer one), but it doesn't explain really well all the functions about a topic, in my opinion.

2. The official advanced user guide (AUR), that combined with the #1 can solve all the doubts. Alone the AUR is far to be enough for me.

For quick references

3. The official user manual

4. The quick training manuals done by HP itself.

What is yours? (given that my experience is really small here)

Moreover, Was that question already discussed here? Could you link me the previous discussion about this topic?

Second one:

A wiki is a wonderful concept and can help a lot to explain better some things (if the community contributes) about the potential of a calculator (like Hp's ones), plus avoiding the redundancy that is frequent on a discussion place. Of course a wiki is not a substitute of a discussion place, but can be a "best of" of a discussion place.

I just see a topic about the wikipedia entry about HPprime ( named "HP-Prime article on Wikipedia") and i found two links to wikis that i didn't know.

From a rational and constructive point of view all calculators' communities should contribute on the same wiki (1), but i can understand that each community wants a unique wiki, so let's contribute to an HP only wiki. But there are a lot of them!

Just a search: "site:hpmuseum.org wiki" returns a lot of discussion with links to several wikis.

So the question is: what is the most known wiki about Hp calculators open to community members?

Is this: http://www.wiki4hp.com/ ?

(1) The best is wikipedia, but i think that wikipedia doesn't allow a lot of examples, quotes from discussions on other sites and so on. Wikipedia is too "serious" and strict even if it is wonderful.


Edited: 9 Sept 2013, 8:29 a.m.

#2

The old HP 48G manuals are very good. Of course some things have changed but I like them because, unlike the 50g manuals, they don't constantly say "in ALG mode do this... in RPN mode do this... with soft menus do this, otherwise do that."

Dave

#3

Hi Pier --

To your point, I think there's value in staying "close to home" with a wiki that focuses on HP products. For example, that recent page for the Prime, on a TI web site, seems to me to be both an honor and a mistake. :-) It's an honor because a TI web site thought enough of the HP Prime to mention it there, but it's a mistake in that that site is focused on all things TI, and one would not normally expect to find a deep source of knowledge about HP products on a TI web site. That's why I suggested that that page would be better fit to wiki4hp.com.

As to which wiki is most well known, I would say that all of them are fairly unknown. After all, we (HP calculator enthusiasts) have a small community here. However, small as it is, most of the activity is here in our beloved HP Museum Forums; the vast majority of all web discussion around HP calculators exists here. In a similar vein, I would like to think that the most useful wiki for HP calculators, to date, is Wiki4HP .

That wiki was originally created as an extension of this site. It was intended that people interested in the new generation of HP calculators like the HP-20b and HP-30b, would go there and share knowledge, document and record things for others. As I have free time and ability, I try to put up new information, clean the pages and make things better. I am always willing to work with others who have knowledge, but don't know how to create wiki pages.

There IS a huge pile of information out there, and on a variety of calculators and devices (like the 41CL, for example). Also the WP-34S and the 43S. It is my fervent hope that those who know more about the HP Prime than the rest of us, will go to wiki4hp.com and start to share that knowledge as well. wiki4hp.com is one of the few spam-free, controlled and recognizable sources of quality information about HP calculators.

Thanks,

Bruce

#4

I strongly agree and in my opinion the information stored just here, on MoHPC's forums are enough to do a lot of things on the wiki. Just an index with link to good discussion about a specific topics can help a lot.

So, let's spent our efforts also on Wiki4hp (hoping that the host is solid and won't be closed soon).


PS: large or small communities are not important, the main thing is the willing to contribute!


Edited: 9 Sept 2013, 1:19 p.m.

#5

Quote:
It's an honor because a TI web site thought enough of the HP Prime to mention it there
The Prime on TI-Planet is more than a mention ;)

* it's a separate, brand-new wiki hosted under the same domain name;

* nowadays, proposed answers to French standardized exam testing provided by TI-Planet usually include a HP-39gII/Prime solution (*)



HP did successfully generate some initial excitement about the Prime in the TI open development community, through good BASIC programming abilities and a mindset relatively more open than TI's. Due to the Prime still being a little while away from mass market availability, interest has waned somewhat in the past couple weeks, but it shall pick back up when the Prime is available to the general public.

It's not the first time members from the TI open development community work on devices from other manufacturers: for instance, it occurred in the recent past for the Casio Prizm, largely due to unhappiness about TI's stubborn mishandling of the Nspire series (which has significantly worsened since then).



Quote:
but it's a mistake in that that site is focused on all things TI, and one would not normally expect to find a deep source of knowledge about HP products on a TI web site. That's why I suggested that that page would be better fit to wiki4hp.com.

In general, it's indeed unusual for the most complete and accurate information about devices from manufacturer A to be provided in a place hosted on the same location as a site best-known for dealing mainly, though not exclusively, with devices from competitor manufacturer B.

That said, as far as the Prime is concerned, at the time of this writing, it seems to me that the hpwiki on tiplanet.org is a better source of information than wiki4hp.com.

http://wiki4hp.com/doku.php?id=start&do=recent shows low activity in general (less than 10 changes since the beginning of 2012 ?), and nothing related to the Prime, while the hpwiki on tiplanet.org contains some information about Prime hardware and capabilities, firmware upgrades, firmware upgrade protocol, file formats... or even several hundreds of KB of IDA input file for BXCBOOT0.BIN, posted by an anonymous person.



Some information sharing will clearly be valuable to everybody. And don't forget the challenge of making Linux run on the platform within several weeks of general availability :)



*: that is, when possible: defining mutually referencing sequences, which occur in several real-world exam problems, triggers an error. Also, the start index must be >= 1 on the 39gII/Prime, while start indices are often 0 in French teaching.
#6

Umm that hpwiki on tiplanet has "only" a lot of information about Hp prime. That are good but can be linked :) (shared knowledge for the win)

Anyway, i try to do something on wiki4hp, if it seems to limited for new users, i'll jump on the another one.

#7

TI-Planet's wiki is completely detached from the actual TI-Planet content. It's only using the tiplanet.org domain name since... it's the one we (administrators) had/have so far.
If/When the HP Wiki is big enough, we'll sure be able to create a new domain name for its sole use ;)
And, well, it's also hosted on a dedicated server which is quite powerful ;)

So, I believe there are many advantages in using this wiki, and it's using very recent software (latest -or almost- MediaWiki) with good extensions&templates allowing easy creation of calculator-related pages...

Anyone is welcome to contribute to the HP Wiki right now hosted on TI-Planet, and well, why not copy the content from other site(s) to this one if needed (and if accepted) in order to have not many, chaotically distributed, sparsed source of information, but a big central one ? (that doesn't mean we can't create backups and/or mirrors if need be)

Indeed so far, only one article (thought with sub-pages) is on the wiki, but it's obviously planned to create more articles.

I believe a good example of a calc-related wiki is TI-Planet's (actual TI-related) wiki : http://wiki.tiplanet.org ; You can witness the number of articles here, while there hasn't been many contributers and it's still quite new. Imagine if just a dozen people for now (random number) decides to help by contributing in creaking/expanding articles, it will definitely grow big and fast :)

I personally am not a HP-knowledgable person (I only have an HP-300s+ and the Prime -and also a 41C from my father), which is why I spread the world of "welcoming new users" to contribute :)
I believe I can give moderation (and even admin. if needed) rights to those who can and wish to help even more :)

Edited: 9 Sept 2013, 2:28 p.m.

#8

Quote:
Anyone is welcome to contribute to the HP Wiki right now hosted on TI-Planet, and well, why not copy the content from other site(s) to this one if needed (and if accepted) in order to have not many, chaotically distributed, sparsed source of information, but a big central one ? (that doesn't mean we can't create backups and/or mirrors if need be)

On that i strongly agree. Distribute the effort, for a small community, is not so good. Just, instead of wikipedia, that copy the information and in the end link the source (1), i think that is better to link the source and then paste the information.

Like:

"from MoHPC discussion 'Topic title' retrieved on DD/MM/YEAR"

> information

So, in the worst case, the most active wiki will copy&mention contents from other wikis. I think that that is ok, and moreover in this manner there will be a small waste of efforts.

(1) Except when there are a lot of sources cited in the same page, for that "references" works great.

Edited: 9 Sept 2013, 4:41 p.m.

#9

I don't really want to get into a pissing contest about wikis, so I'll just say that wiki4hp.com has been around for quite some time, and it's fully supported, also on a dedicated server, expected to be around "forever", and it contains far more useful information to the average HP reader than this other wiki does. Yes, it's had only a few updates lately, but that shouldn't be representative of the level of support and respect it has.

However, people can speak with their fingers. If the HP crowd here, who knows me and knows how long I've been providing wiki4hp, prefers to go to a TI-based site to share information on the HP Prime, then that's their prerogative. Personally, I hope that they DO NOT go there, and instead go to wiki4hp. I would rather see HP calculator stay in a home that's hosted and supported by HP enthusiasts.

Just my $0.02, and sorry, but I will not engage in any more debate about it.

Thanks,

Bruce

#10

Hello,



> What is the best reading list to learn how to master at least the

> built in functions of the hp 50g


This is the AUR inside your 50g including at least one example for

every command (which the AUR lacks):


HP 50G Full Command & Function Reference incorporated into the O.S.

DEUTSCHE HILFE für den HP 50g - Eingebaute Hilfe für alle Befehle.

HP 50G Multi Lingual Pack - Guia de Bolso da HP 50g em Português.

HP 50G Multi Lingual Pack - Ayuda para TODOS los comandos en español.



Enjoy,

Andreas

http://www.software49g.gmxhome.de



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