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Show HN: NoteCalc

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41–50 of 79 posts

Re: Show HN: NoteCalc

#41

Post by nsajko »

I'm not quite sure what's the purpose of either NoteCalc or Soulver, but I am currently getting acquainted with TeX - and from that perspective NoteCalc seems comically under-powered compared to what's achievable through plugging into the Lua(Meta)TeX engine with Lua, or with the Lua C API.

I'm not criticizing NoteCalc, rather I think somebody should create a lightweight note taking tool like that, I don't think it would be very difficult by leveraging the already existing TeX/ConTeXt/LMTX/LuaMetaTeX machinery, and it would blow the Soulver-like stuff out of the water. The main design problem could be deciding exactly where between ConTeXt and Soulver should the new tool/language lie power-wise, i.e., how much should it expose.

I'm not proposing using TeX directly, rather I'm proposing basing a new, simpler language on the Lua(Meta)TeX TeX engine, and probably also on ConTeXt/LMTX.

Re: Show HN: NoteCalc

#42

Post by filleokus »

gregoriol wrote: post #40

On macOS, there is the excellent Numi app Sadly I haven't found any equivalent for iOS (iPhone and iPad): it would definitely get my money!

Numi would be my favourite of all these kind of calculators on macOS, if it wasn't for the lack of unit calculations[0], e.g density = 2 kg / 3 l, mass = 10 dm^3 * density

[0]: Not sure of the actual term in English

Re: Show HN: NoteCalc

#43

Post by bbodi »

nsajko wrote: post #41

I'm not quite sure what's the purpose of either NoteCalc or Soulver, but I am currently getting acquainted with TeX - and from that perspective NoteCalc seems comically under-powered compared to what's achievable through plugging into the Lua(Meta)TeX engine with Lua, or with the Lua C API. I'm not criticizing NoteCalc, rather I think somebody should create a lightweight note taking tool like that, I don't think it w…

One of my primary design goal was something like that: "My mother should be able to use this tool to calculate/plan her vacation expenses". (My mother is older and not a tech guru you can guess :)) So the primary focus are on simple calculations with meaningful context and immediate feedback. Nothing fancy.

Though, beside that, I think it provides some nice features. E.g. the matrix creation/editing functionality was born because I could not find a simple tool to double check my rendering calculations with.

Re: Show HN: NoteCalc

#44

Post by nsajko »

bbodi wrote: post #43
nsajko wrote: post #41

I'm not quite sure what's the purpose of either NoteCalc or Soulver, but I am currently getting acquainted with TeX - and from that perspective NoteCalc seems comically under-powered compared to what's achievable through plugging into the Lua(Meta)TeX engine with Lua, or with the Lua C API. I'm not criticizing NoteCalc, rather I think somebody should create a lightweight note taking tool like that, I don't think it w…

One of my primary design goal was something like that: "My mother should be able to use this tool to calculate/plan her vacation expenses". (My mother is older and not a tech guru you can guess :)) So the primary focus are on simple calculations with meaningful context and immediate feedback. Nothing fancy. Though, beside that, I think it provides some nice features. E.g. the matrix creation/editing functionality was…

Yeah, I guess NoteCalc will be useful to many people, it's just that I'm noticing the sad lack of utilization of LuaTex (probably because people don't know it exists and exposes the power of TeX through Lua).

The targets of NoteCalc vs. the tool I'm proposing would be somewhat different, too, because LuaTex outputs primarily to PDF, and I don't know if it can produce HTML.

Re: Show HN: NoteCalc

#45

Post by w0m »

monkeydust wrote: post #39

Very nice. I end up using google search more frequently for simple calcs and have been wanting something to take that to another level but not as far as a full blown Juypter notebook. This could fit that sweetspot for me and others I imagine.

I usually use Alfred's build in Calc for simple stuff; and ipython when i want more (or reproducibility to play with numbers better)

Re: Show HN: NoteCalc

#46

Post by b3n »

bitexploder wrote: post #38

This is really cool. I am always in Org mode which lets you do "literate" programming as well. I think NoteCalc is a little more streamlined, but I am very used to throwing a little Python or elisp into my notes when I need to do math. Great to see more options on this front. Org-babel is a nice package, though it does have some limitations.

Any reason you don't use calc-mode to insert mathematical results into your Org buffer? Calc-mode is extremely powerful.

Re: Show HN: NoteCalc

#47

Post by SamBam »

leejoramo wrote: post #11
himujjal wrote: post #2

Great work. Is there a Terminal UI for this? Many users love to have simple programs in the Terminal itself.

A version to use within VSCode would be very useful too.

I was just thinking, turning this into a VSCode plugin would be awesome. Would save me from opening up the browser console every time I wanted to do some simple math.

Re: Show HN: NoteCalc

#48

Post by SamBam »

Very cool, though I find there's a lack of discoverability as to what I can do with it, and no help is provided if there's an error.

    pi() => 3.14...
    sin(3.14 rad) => 0.00..
    sin(pi() rad) => err
No idea why there's that error.

Re: Show HN: NoteCalc

#49

Post by tesseract »

32bitkid wrote: post #36
mattweinberg wrote: post #6

This looks great! The README says: > Honestly, it just tries to be a free Soulver alternative in your browser. For people on macOS, Soulver is excellent and worth checking out: https://soulver.app . I almost always have a Soulver window open on my screen.

Just wanted to also drop a recommendation for soulver, but I have been split between it and Calca ( http://calca.io/ ) which I think is _also_ worth checking out, if you like this kind of hybrid notes/calculator like interface. The ultimate interface _for me_ would be somewhere in between Calca (which I think has superior support for functions/graphing/logical calculations) and Soulver (which I think has better usabi…

Love Soulver and Calca looks great too, thanks for pointing that out! Personally I would love a tool like one of those but with built in unit handling/dimensional analysis capabilities equal or better to the Google search bar...

Re: Show HN: NoteCalc

#50

Post by bbodi »

SamBam wrote: post #48

Very cool, though I find there's a lack of discoverability as to what I can do with it, and no help is provided if there's an error. pi() => 3.14... sin(3.14 rad) => 0.00.. sin(pi() rad) => err No idea why there's that error.

Thanks for noticing it!

Unfortunately it seems units cannot be applied to function results. It must be fixed, I noted down, thanks!

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