HP 48G - Menus

Menus
Menus are typing aids—nothing more. Using a menu
key toinvoke a name is simply a quick way to enter the
name; command line or menu, the result is the same.
Don’t confuse menus with directories: Directories are
the partitioned areas in memory where object names
are actually stored; menus are just selected groups of
name-typing aids collected in the display for your con-
venience. The names represented by a menu might
actually be stored in various directories (and as noted
on pp. 8-9, the result of invoking any name, via menu
or otherwise, depends on that name’s actual storage
location in relation to the current directory path).
The VAR menu is often confused with a directory, be-
cause itstyping aids are for allthe names stored in the
current directory; if you move to a different directory,
you see a different VAR menu. This gives the (false)
impression that, to invoke a name, you must be in the
directory where that name is stored. No. Youcan in-
voke any name (typed “longhand” or via menu—no
difference), as long as that name is stored some-
where in the current directory path. For example, all
built-in command names reside, in effect, “at HOME,”
so that you can indeed invoke them from anywhere.
(If invoking a name required you first to move to its
actual storage location, you'd have to press
before invoking any built-in name—not very handy.)
Menus can have more than one “page” (i.e. more than
six typing aids); you reach the other page(s) via
or (GJPREV]. There are over 100 pre-defined menus
(and you can build your own, too—see p. 38). All pre-
defined menus are numbered for use with the MEML
command. (Those numbers are shown herein beside
each menu diagram.) For example, the 2nd page of
the (&JCHARS) menu (#62—see opposite) is denoted
62.02. So, instead of moving there via (&[CHARS)(NXT),
you can use bZ. B2 as the argument for MENL.
One final thought: The keyboard itself is also a sort of
menu. ltis, after all, just another collection of typing/
entering shortcuts. But notice this about its design:
The (oJ)-shifted version of a key often gives a handy,
fill-in-the-blanks application screen; and the (&)-shifted
version of the same key offers a pre-defined menu of
related programmable commands.
10 THE HP 48G/GX Pocker GuIDE