On this page:
Installing Hypatia, Opening Hypatia for the First Time, Help, Updates.
Hypatia is a stand-alone program that consists of one executable file, hy.exe. Hypatia is fully portable, and does not touch the Windows registry.
The download file hypatia.zip contains hy.exe, the file readme.txt, the folder \doc with the user manual .htm files, and the folder \source with the source code files.
Create an empty folder, unpack hypatia.zip into it. Make sure that hy.exe is in that folder, and the documentation .htm files are in the folder \doc underneath it.
Delete or just ignore the \source folder unless you are interested in the source code.
You can move readme.txt from the program folder or delete it after you have read it.
Create a link to hy.exe on the desktop. In your file manager right-click hy.exe, go to "Send to", click "Desktop (create shortcut)", and then rename the icon "Hypatia".
Optional: right-click the icon, and in "Properties - Shortcut" you can define a key combination with which you can start Hypatia.
(In Windows 10 you could set properties like console windows size, font, colors etc. To be able to do this in Windows 11, you first need to change the Windows Terminal to a CMD Window. Here, though, is not the place to discuss how this is done.)
Optional: create a link to \doc\index.htm on the desktop.
Optional: add the folder with hy.exe to the system path. This allows you to run Hypatia by entering hy at the system prompt, wherever you are.
When you run Hypatia for the first time, you get a message on your screen that starts with ...
Hypatia RPN Calculator 4.5
hy.ini file not found
hy.ini file created in program folder - you can edit it according to your needs
... and ends with ...
= 0
?
The line = 0 is the most recent result -- it is always zero when the program starts. (The last result from a previous session is still preserved, but about that, another time.)
The line ? (question mark followed by a space) is Hypatia's input prompt. It means, you have to type something, and press the Enter key.
If you already know how to use Hypatia you can start doing it. If not, it is best to quit the program for now.
You can quit Hypatia by entering Q or QUIT. You can also close the console window -- Hypatia does not keep files open, so this is safe to do.
You can get help information by entering HELP followed by the topic you want to look up.
HELP on its own gives you an overview, HELP ? shows you the available help topics.
HELP doc opens this documentation.
Entering only a question mark will show you the current program settings.
By the way, you do not have to enter the word help in upper case characters, they are only used in this documentation -- to Hypatia, upper or lower case makes no difference.
Keep checking hypatia-rpn.net for updates.
When a newer version of Hypatia exists, download the zip file, replace the file hy.exe, replace the readme.txt and the pdf documentartion files, and replace the source and html folders (do not overwrite them, because some files may have become obsolete and been deleted).
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