When in Decimal mode, you can enter and do calculations with DMS numbers using the DMS key “º ’ ”” (keyboard ' or "), or the To DMS key “®º ’ ””. For example, to enter 1º5’23.3”, enter this:
1 ' 5 ' 23.3
The display will show “1º5’23.3”. If you press Enter, the display is “completed” and shows e.g. “1º05’23.30””, depending on your fix/float setting. To display this as decimal, use the Round button (keyboard “$” or “R”).
Please note that internally, DMS numbers are equivalent to real numbers – the difference is simply how the display is formatted.
Sticky DMS
It is assumed that if you are working with DMS numbers, you most likely want to see results using this format. Therefore, the result from certain operations will retain the DMS format. These operations are:
DMS as trig results
You can in the Configuration Dialog specify that inverse trigonometric functions (arcsine, arccos, arctan, polar) format the angular result as DMS (decimal mode only). This might be convenient at times.
Otherwise, any sufficiently small number can be displayed as DMS by the To DMS button (Ctrl-'). A not quite arbitrary limit of 65.535 is set as the maximum integer portion of a number allowing this. If the limit were higher, roundoff errors would show up more often in the seconds part of the display.
See also: