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Show HN: I made a web-based notepad with a built in unit calculator

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241–246 of 246 posts

Re: Show HN: I made a web-based notepad with a built in unit calculator

#241
post #57

This looks pretty cool. I've long been looking for something similar to Soulver ( https://soulver.app/ ) that I can use on Linux. This seems promising. One small criticism: In my opinion, no web-based writing app is useful unless the tab key inserts a tab. The default behavior of most browsers to move focus to the next field is tremendously infuriating in this context. Unfortunately, that's what happens here, at leas…

TIL about soulver and https://github.com/soulverteam/SoulverCore

Re: Show HN: I made a web-based notepad with a built in unit calculator

#244
post #57

This looks pretty cool. I've long been looking for something similar to Soulver ( https://soulver.app/ ) that I can use on Linux. This seems promising. One small criticism: In my opinion, no web-based writing app is useful unless the tab key inserts a tab. The default behavior of most browsers to move focus to the next field is tremendously infuriating in this context. Unfortunately, that's what happens here, at leas…

Note: I had this response typed up but didn't submit...

One related app that I absolutely love is Qalculate![1] (yes, it has a built-in exclamation for default enthusiasm :) )

It can do cool stuff like converting N (newtons) to kg.m/s^2 when you specify units as ?kg. It also converts units like 1kW x 1year = 31.55... GJ

It's fantastic for engineering and specially back-of-envelope calculations. This notepad aspect does seem useful though. One alternative is to use Jupyter notebooks, sometimes I work problems with Sage[2]+Jupyter. Sage is extremely powerful (you can do calculus, linear algebra, and more) but doesn't support units (that I know of), it's more geared toward advanced maths.

[1] https://qalculate.github.io/

[2] https://www.sagemath.org/ It's a bit on the heavy side although it's definitely worth it if you're doing a lot of math. I think the flatpak is preferred due to its significant size.

Re: Show HN: I made a web-based notepad with a built in unit calculator

#245
Funny, almost at the same time I published a similar tool on github. https://github.com/SimonWaldherr/liveCalc Mine is released under the MIT license and is mostly based on math.js. Suggestions for improvement and pull requests are very welcome.

Re: Show HN: I made a web-based notepad with a built in unit calculator

#246
post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You get it that you're proving the point that comments like those are harmful, right?

Well, I wasn't trying to prove or disprove anything. Just seeking clarity. Not sure if you were referring directly to me, but I don't think my comment was harmful. Others may have also been led astray and an exchange like this might be educational for them to read.

The way that "Well, there's tons of conflicting advice out there if that's the case" was situated/employed in the discussion makes it sound like an attempt to say that there are merits on both sides of the argument--that there are conflicting opinions and the argument is as of yet still unresolved. The problem is that the comments you linked to are uninformed and just flat out wrong--bad advice from people who don't know what they're talking about and in no position to be giving advice. (Another example: the comment by samatman above, which should be buried in downvotes but inexplicably is not even in the grey--and I suspect is actually ranked somewhere at >1.) The only prudent thing to do is to clearly bracket it as such, in order to minimize harm.
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