@gbl08ma: maybe you would like to make the dark theme black and navy blue, or maybe even custom colors?

r4ph: the Run-Mat bug is unfixable - we still don't know how to get back to the add-in execution after jumping to a system app like Run-Matrix.
The other bug is now fixed.

Stopwatch is waiting for me to think of a smart way to store milliseconds along with seconds. The timer was easy because it has second precision and so seconds since epoch is more than enough, but if I were to store milliseconds too I'd go above the limits of unsigned int.
I also need to get RTC_GetTicks and friends to work, as for some reason my compiler's linker is not linking them.

flyingfisch: please keep in mind that we do not want burnt backlights, so avoid using the calculator with maximum brightness for a long period of time. This includes the lantern. Because many people get annoyed when they enter the lantern mode by accident/first time, I've made it easy to get out, and it's going to stay like that.



AFAIK GCC is compiling with optimizations with the target of obtaining the smallest binary size possible. When I said I managed to put a lot of functionality into 140KB (less, given the huge g3a header), I really meant so - specially given the fact that most of my code is not optimized, and it's already almost 7000 lines (and the stopwatch and tasklist is yet to be added).


No. Waste of binary size for little utility (remember, the add-in's name is "Utilities" not "Looks" or "Skin selector"). I even thought of removing the dark theme setting before I got PrintMiniMini to print inverted, but it stays because it's useful for using the Prizm as a bed clock (like any nerd would do that).

EDIT: Beta 4 is out now. It has a task list, and now when you want to add a task or an event, you don't need to do Insert, you may just start typing and it's as if you had done Insert before. Also, home screen menu items can now be called by pressing their position in the keypad (for example, to open the task list, press F3 and then 4).
Download at: http://tny.im/hP

Thanks for the quick replies Correct me if I'm wrong, but it I'm guessing it only goes directly to Run-Mat because of you making it that way. I recall using your lock tool and it would just go back to the main screen of the add-in. I think there should be an option for this at the set up screen, if possible, as I would like it better if it went back to the clock (I wear no watch and I use the calculator a lot to check the time ). Also, there is still some weird behavior concerning the Morse light mode: if you press Menu, it will now turn on the light instead of quitting, everything fine. But pressing the Exit key right after pressing the Menu key will make it go back to the clock, automatically exiting to the Menu. Kinda like it remembers you pressed the Menu key, but it doesn't act until you leave the flashlight. Another minor bug I've seen is that the Lock F key tooltip doesn't invert the color properly when using dark theme.

Until next time

So how ong would it take to burn out a backlght?

The problem also existed with my previous lock add-in. Feel free to check for yourself if you don't believe me.

I can't control how GetKeyWait_OS ignores the Menu key, or if/when it clears the key from the buffer. Blocking the Menu key is the best/only way to stop people from exiting the add-in with the backlight dimmed. The fact that Menu gets handled once I stop using GetKeyWait and start using GetKey is unwanted, however. I don't think I can do anything about that but I'll look into it.

And now for the lock function key problem, I don't know what I can do about it, as it doesn't happen on my calculator or on the emulator. Could you please post a screenshot of the problem? (First set capture mode to BMP on the Link screen, then go on the add-in and press Shift+7, input a number, connect the calc to PC and copy the .bmp file that is in the Capt folder)



I don't know but I suspect there's a reason why the maximum backlight level set by the OS isn't 249, but rather something around 140. It may be a reason similar to the one why the default CPU speed isn't 94.3 MHz but 58 MHz - some hardware is incompatible, and there may be higher component wear-out at higher CPU speeds.

I do know that, but at the Options screen you could toggle whether or not it would open Run-Mat after unlocking, therefore preventing the bug from happening (you actually made a note on it in the very add-in ). I think this option should also be available at the Utilities Set Up screen.

UPDATE:
I feel silly. I think that upgrading the add-in broke some things around here. While writing this post, I couldn't get an image on the key tooltip, so I cleared the calculator memory. Now I noticed the option to toggle the Run-Mat is there already. Also, after clearing the old settings I couldn't reproduce the bad tooltip anymore. Huh

I think I warned people to delete the "Set" file in the Main Memory @UTILS folder, didn't I? If I didn't, here's the warning anyway. It's needed because I added more settings throughout the versions (well, Beta3->Beta4 added no settings, but others did), and the newer settings always go into an "undefined" state, because the "Set" file doesn't contain them.

I think you are missing the obvious. Look at a laptop. What one easy thing that you can do to kill your battery? Turn up that brightness. Yup, the light for the monitor is a major power drain compared to the rest of the hardware. What's another major battery killed? Keeping the CPU at the designed speed.

Casio is very smart. They know that the average person doesn't want to buy batteries every week or month. They underclock the CPU (note: CPU was designed to run much faster. What we do is not overclocking, but remove underclocking restrictions. Attempts to actually overclock the SH7724 results in hardware errors and a lockup. According to Renesas and the Linux kernel, when you say "94.3MHz", it is actually ~450MHz for the CPU clock, but the calc is limited from the other clocks being lower). The brightness being limited is a must as you probably wouldn't buy a calc that has absolutely terrible battery life and can't survive on USB power (by OS).

OK, some quick comments.

1. in dark theme: the lock icon is not grayed like the rest of the f-key menus are. Also, when you open a menu, you get an ugly white border around the screen (don't know if its possible to get rid of). The menu header backgrounds could possibly be a tad darker. lastly, could you make deselected things in menus dark blue instead of invisible?

2. Would it be possible to have an option to prompt the user whether to go to run-mat or stay in addin upon unlocking?

3. In tasks, could you have a toggle checkbox next to each entry so the user can check a task when he has finished it?

BTW, I use this as a bed clock, daily planner, and general.... well, utility.

Thanks so much for making this and keep up the good work!

Can you at least read the previous replies? We discussed just that and the options/solutions are there.
About the third point, I think I could add it if I hacked the calendar events part a bit more (because tasks are just calendar events on day/month/year zero). I'll look into it.

AHelper: that makes sense, but one thing are defaults and another thing is maximum levels. Casio could have allowed a 6th or 7th backlight level while keeping the default at 3, and then people would have to explicitly increase the backlight level (resulting in huge battery drain). But since we're often talking about silly users which wouldn't even read a simple "Increasing the brightness level will decrease the lifetime of the batteries" message, I kind of understand.

I believe the CPU clock is limited not only to save power but also because things like the flash memory and RAM aren't able to work at the maximum CPU speed. Still, I believe the correct way to solve the CPU power drain issues is by adding a dynamic clock system and not by permanently underclocking the system but eh... I understand the latter is easier.

Please note that the CPG has many, many clocks. The CPU clock only drives the SH core. There is a peripheral clock that drives the ROM, ROM, LCD, etc.. If you load something into IL memory and run it, it shouldn't have the same bottleneck that running from the flash would have. (Each op code read is exactly 1 tick @ CPU clock speed)

It's not really a subject for this thread, but my conclusion is that it seems some work is yet to be done in terms of Prizm overclocking...

(BTW: I also noticed that on my friend's calculator, which has a "defect" and can only clock as high as 87MHz, the Bfile functions seem to work faster/memory access is faster. It, for example, loads a calendar month with no events much faster than mine does, with both calculators at the same clock speed and both with their storage memories optimized)

Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't read your whole post.

shift+7 doesn't seem to work in the addin though. Maybe the getkey routine?

Ah, true. I'm not using GetKey on the home screen so no screen captures on-calc, only on the emulator. Either way, reset the settings by removing the "Set" file and you'll be fine.

OK, got that fixed, what about removing the white border when opening a menu?

I already looked into it before, searched the whole add-in code and couldn't find a reason for the a border to be white inside a menu while a key isn't pressed. I'm explicitly telling it to draw a black border when it enters a menu, and nothing.

huh, that's weird. can you at least make unselected items dk blue?

maybe make the menu header dk blue with white text, also.

EDIT:

also, just noticed, the border goes away when you press a button. weird.

EDIT2:

what about the prompt for run-mat on unlock?

also, in the menus in dark mode, the "...or press EXIT" text is not inverted.

EDIT3:

when pressing EXE after typing in your password (after locking your calc), don't let it go to the main screen until EXE is released. This way if lock on EXE is selected, it won't lock the calc again.

EDIT4:

I remember that DirectDrawRect (or something like that) will draw directly to the screen, and it will draw on the border of the screen.

When you refresh the screen, it just erases the part of the rectangle that is not on the border. Don't know if that will help as far as dark mode white border bug goes.

Also, if you open calendar, press exe, then press exe again, you get a system error.

Beta 5 is out now. Changelog:
- Timer will now work past some year around 2030, because unsigned ints are no longer used in favor of long ints.
Because of this, old timers files have gone incompatible, so you must delete the files Timer1~6 in the @UTILS Main Memory folder. This will clear all timers, of course.
- Added task toggling. Now each task has a little checkbox you can enable/disable by pressing F6. Good for marking a task as complete.
- The last bug flyingfisch reported, about Calendar->EXE->EXE, is fixed. It also happened on tasks->EXE when there were no tasks. It was simply an if condition that was missing.
- The lock password screen now waits for you to release EXE in order to prevent accidental locking.

Download at: http://tny.im/hP

Sorry for the delay in releasing this but I've been busy with real life and another exciting projects, including some Prizm-related ones which I'm yet to announce at Cemetech (but those following my blog or those who happened to read the SAX at the right time, already know what I'm up to in terms of add-in development).

Stopwatch is coming very soon, and after that I believe it's time to release 1.0. I also have some more nice utilities planned for 1.1.
The dark theme is something low priority about which I'm not going to worry about, right now. I'm aware that things look ugly/impossible to read in the popup menus. I'm not going to fix that now, sorry.

Just an idea.... what about a tape measure/caliper for measuring small things?

about dark mode having a white border, you could do a workaround using drawRectDirect to draw on the border.