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The Emacs Calculator (2009)

nullprogram.com

41–50 of 57 posts

Re: The Emacs Calculator (2009)

#41
post #32

Here it goes again, my favorite OS, Emacs. If only it had a web browser as good as chrome.

I wonder what a web browser would look like if it evolved inside emacs.

There were and still are approaches to web browsing in Emacs. But like every other completely mainstream web browser, keeping up with the evolving web, and especially its client-side programmability and performance needs, made its usefulness rather marginal.

In the end it’s often less trouble to switch over to the browser window that’s already open anyway and copy and paste data between it and emacs.

Re: The Emacs Calculator (2009)

#42
post #30

I took the time to properly learn and use emacs-calc this year, after being an emacs user anyway. Before that, I tended to use bc on the shell for quick calculations, but always felt that to be too limited. Since then I am practically a daily user. It's not without downsides, and some simple workflows that seem common and trivial to me personally feel a bit awkward and contorting. For example, working with variables/…

This small addition lets you work with SI byte units. I have no idea why this wouldn't be in the default unit set, but hey, this is why we use emacs.

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/mnp/dotfiles/master/shared...

Re: The Emacs Calculator (2009)

#43
"That's just awesome! That's a text editor ... doing calculus!"

Well, some might call that a good definition of scope creep, but at this point I'm sure we're all well aware that even though Emacs might be called a text editor, that's not really all it is.

Re: The Emacs Calculator (2009)

#44
post #10
post #3

Being an old HP48 user, finding Calc was what me fall the rest of the way in love with Emacs. If I'm at the shell prompt I'll still startup GP/Pari for quick calculations, but it's hard to beat Calc for longer sessions. The only downside is that, like any advanced Emacs functionality, if you don't use it frequently you forget all the commands.

And an HP48 emulator is still what I use on my phone as a calculator. For the reason you mention, I need to get into the habit of using Calc for my quick calculations; right now, I usually use Google (ick, infix notation) or dc.

I've have Free42 on my Android phone. Do you have a particular emulator to recommend?

--

http://thomasokken.com/free42/

Re: The Emacs Calculator (2009)

#45
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet so many RPN people are Lisp programmers the rest of the time. I guess it balances out.

I would really like a postfix lisp. I wonder what edge cases I would run into designing one.

Aren't concatenative languages like Forth and Factor essentially what you're looking for?

Re: The Emacs Calculator (2009)

#46

"That's just awesome! That's a text editor ... doing calculus!" Well, some might call that a good definition of scope creep, but at this point I'm sure we're all well aware that even though Emacs might be called a text editor, that's not really all it is.

I like to think of Emacs as a virtual lisp machine for writing your own text editor.

Re: The Emacs Calculator (2009)

#47
This totally nerd sniped me last night. But what is the point? I can't think of a situation where it would give better results than professional tools dedicated to the same tasks. It was probably cool in the 90s, when the alternatives were much weaker.

Re: The Emacs Calculator (2009)

#48
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And an HP48 emulator is still what I use on my phone as a calculator. For the reason you mention, I need to get into the habit of using Calc for my quick calculations; right now, I usually use Google (ick, infix notation) or dc.

I've have Free42 on my Android phone. Do you have a particular emulator to recommend? -- http://thomasokken.com/free42/

I use Droid48: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.ab.x48&hl=... (https://github.com/shagr4th/droid48)

Re: The Emacs Calculator (2009)

#49
post #30

I took the time to properly learn and use emacs-calc this year, after being an emacs user anyway. Before that, I tended to use bc on the shell for quick calculations, but always felt that to be too limited. Since then I am practically a daily user. It's not without downsides, and some simple workflows that seem common and trivial to me personally feel a bit awkward and contorting. For example, working with variables/…

Since I've discovered "nickle"[1] (by pure chance), I've been aliasing bc=nickle on every system I had access to.

nickle has normal algebraic notation with arbitrary precision, configurable base input/output for every expression (very reminiscent of calc), math functions and C operators work out of the box. It has variables, as well as a simple c-like language for additional extensions.

If RPN is not for you, "nickle" is a perfect "bc" replacement which works as you would expect.

[1] https://nickle.org/manual.html

Re: The Emacs Calculator (2009)

#50
post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've have Free42 on my Android phone. Do you have a particular emulator to recommend? -- http://thomasokken.com/free42/

I use Droid48: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.ab.x48&hl=... ( https://github.com/shagr4th/droid48 )

Thank you. I saw that one. Some of the more recent critical comments (stability, responsiveness) gave me some pause.

I'll give it a go.

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