So I love the concept, but the execution is kinda buggy, at least on macOS 11.6.3. I opened it and typed 1+. It calculated it correctly, but the Stop button never turned back into the "=" button (even though the computation and display had clearly finished; clicking it just ran "output(1)" repeatedly). When I quit and relaunched it, and typed output(1), it crashed. Is there a place to submit bug/crash reports?
Show HN: All desktop software calculators are wrong, so I had to build my own
131–140 of 169 posts
Re: Show HN: All desktop software calculators are wrong, so I had to build my own
#132I still use the python repl in a terminal for my desktop calculator. Its a good choice since usually im already in the terminal anyways.
I've been using clisp in the terminal since, well, forever. There's probably no advantage over Python, though.
Re: Show HN: All desktop software calculators are wrong, so I had to build my own
#133Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’m sure it’s not ideal, but for my purposes cmd-space (random math) is generally sufficient. But I’m also not a mathematician so I do maths with numbers and not letters :)
Even with numbers only, it can still be useful to know how wrong the result is. Chalk keeps track of every inaccuracy when dealing with decimal numbers.
Oh yeah, I very much use it as a super quick access calculator. If I was needing in a situation where I needed controlled error etc it wouldn’t necessarily be great, but that’s ok because in general if you have me working on something requiring that your project has other issues :)
Re: Show HN: All desktop software calculators are wrong, so I had to build my own
#134Earlier quoted context omitted.
I second the usefulness of the calculator built into Emacs. Even if I didn't use Emacs for anything else, I'd keep an alias around for starting calc.
I agree, but as good as it is, this is not where people would like to find a good calculator.
Why not? Is the overhead of Emacs around the calculator too much on a modern desktop computer? Emacs apps are far leaner than the many Electron apps people seem to not have a practical problem with.
Re: Show HN: All desktop software calculators are wrong, so I had to build my own
#135Earlier quoted context omitted.
We have calculators open on our machine label computers. Those computers don't have a keyboard only a touch screen. Without the keypad these computers could not use the windows calculator. That said this is an unusual use case.
If someone was trying to enter text into a running application on that machine, wouldn't an on-screen keyboard pop up? (Unless that's been disabled, of course.)
No it doesn't pop up automatically. It can be brought up but you have to find it.
Anything other than day to day use is done via remote connection.
Re: Show HN: All desktop software calculators are wrong, so I had to build my own
#136My current desktop calculator is actually the PopOS launcher. Support constants, every function I need and even unit conversion.
Yeah I use the math functionality in the built-in Spotlight search on the Mac and it does all the basics I need. Even does currency conversion.
Re: Show HN: All desktop software calculators are wrong, so I had to build my own
#137If you enjoy skeumorphic calculators with their data interfaces, and haven't already, look into the RPN[1] notation used in (most, I believe) scientific/programmable calculators. Once you go there, you stay there. Just Google[2] or DDG[3] for it to play around.
1: Wikipedia entry: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_Polish_notation
2: Google search: https://www.google.com/search?q=rpn%20calculator%20online
Re: Show HN: All desktop software calculators are wrong, so I had to build my own
#138I see that you mention it's open source, but for the life of me I cannot find the link to a repo anywhere on the site. Is it on GitHub? Am I missing something?
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Re: Show HN: All desktop software calculators are wrong, so I had to build my own
#139If you enjoy skeumorphic calculators with their data interfaces, and haven't already, look into the RPN[1] notation used in (most, I believe) scientific/programmable calculators. Once you go there, you stay there. Just Google[2] or DDG[3] for it to play around. 1: Wikipedia entry: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_Polish_notation 2: Google search: https://www.google.com/search?q=rpn%20calculator%20online 3: DDG:…
Chalk has an option to use RPN
Re: Show HN: All desktop software calculators are wrong, so I had to build my own
#140Halfway through your article and I 100% agree with all your complaints. I compulsively carry my T1-84 calculator everywhere since it feels like such an annoyance to have to resort to using any generic desktop calculator. ETA: I am very impressed by your calculator so far. I thought my tmux + ipython setup was good, but this shows that I just didn't think about the possibilities of what a proper calculator app could b…
Thanks ! There were so many things to say that I was afraid nobody would read up to the end. GUI is only the visible part of the iceberg.
Number representation (to keep exact values), accuracy, interval arithmetics... are hard to introduce in the first place.