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Show HN: All desktop software calculators are wrong, so I had to build my own

• chacha21 5y ago
  https://chachatelier.fr/chalk/article/chalk.html https://chachatelier.fr/chalk/article/chalk.html
  • prashnts 5y ago
    Unfortunately the link is unreadable on mobile due to the sidebar taking all the space.
    • chacha21 5y ago
      Quickfix : I have added a button to hide the TOC. Not sure if it fits mobile screens anyway.
      • setr 5y ago
        Body text remains at its original width when ToC is hidden, remaining unreadable at like 10% of screen width (with a lot of blank space). Probably better quick fix: have ToC initialize as hidden on page load
      • FastEatSlow 5y ago
        Chrome's developer tools has a device toolbar to help you test usability on mobile devices.
        • makapuf 5y ago
          So does firefox if you're using this browser https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Tools/Responsive_Design_Mode https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Tools/Responsive_De...
          • chacha21 5y ago
            Thanks, I have added some more "mobile compliant" CSS styles.
            • darnir 5y ago
              Its still unreadable on mobile. 10% or less of the screen is being used for the text
  • Mindless2112 5y ago
    > Windows Calculator almost does that: you can see the full input as you type, but it disappears upon hitting the final "=". This has been rectified, by the way.
    • chacha21 5y ago
      Even if it proves me wrong, it still makes me happy that some work is done on this tool. (I will fix the article)
  • ramses0 5y ago
    This description is like a dissertation and history lesson in calculation, all in one. Add a comparison of `chalk` to the babbage difference engine, and it'll be 100% complete! :-P
• oversocialized 5y ago
  Anyone remember the omg wtf calculator contest? https://thedailywtf.com/articles/OMGWTF-Finalist-09-Terrys-Calculator https://thedailywtf.com/articles/OMGWTF-Finalist-09-Terrys-C...
• smasher164 5y ago
  Great work! I like how well considered the design is. This calculator takes a point in the design space with text input, equation rendering, a grapher, and Big Int/Floats for number representation. I wonder if the author considered an input method where keypresses translate directly into a rendered equation? Symbolab kind of does this, so instead of writing an expression in some functional style and seeing its rendered output, I can directly manipulate the rendered equation with the keyboard. The other point the author makes about discoverability of operators like sqrt and cbrt, I feel that you could circumvent it by introducing a semantic search feature for operators. For example, typing "square root" would display a list of suggestions for operators that match that, like an IDE. The last question I have is if the author has looked at libraries like Calcium (https://fredrikj.net/calcium/ https://fredrikj.net/calcium/) or the work that went into the Android calculator recently (https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/3385412.3386037 https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/3385412.3386037). They use exact arithmetic with computable real/complex numbers. It might serve as a cleaner abstraction that switching between different BigNum representations yourself.
  • chacha21 5y ago
    Hi, >I wonder if the author considered an input method where keypresses translate directly into a rendered equation? Personally, I don't like such systems, because I always end up moving the cursor up/down/left/right trying to add parenthesis here and there; so I am not considering adding it. I really feel better with fast, raw text input. >The other point the author makes about discoverability of operators like sqrt and cbrt, I feel that you could circumvent it by introducing a semantic search feature for operators. Indeed, I can add this kind of things by adding keywords to the documentation items. Currently I rather tried to narrow the search results, but I can expand them a little with some experience on what the users really needed. >The last question I have is if the author has looked at libraries like Calcium (...) or the work that went into the Android calculator recently I don't know Calcium, and I am not a smartphone user, so Android is beyond my little world :-) Calcium seems very interesting on its own, but it is unlikely that I can use it in Chalk. I already built my own abstractions to do everything low-level related to bit manipulation and garbage bits. Adding a little formal calculus will certainly be home-made either. However, like I did with ARBLIB, I can also cherrypick just a subset of the library that would exactly fix one problem or give some precious help even on a single feature. I will have a deeper look at its API and how it can mix up with the current Chalk design. Thanks for pointing it out !
• vermarish 5y ago
  Being able to compute sin(0.1)/0.1 and reading the uncertainty at a magnitude of E-309 feels magical after doing everything in MATLAB, where the default float type only counts down to E-16. This is really cool!
• kkfx 5y ago
  You should try Emacs calc inside EXWM :D
• brimble 5y ago
  > On a pocket calculator, you have one keyboard layout, and you simply ignore the keys you don't use. Has this ever been a problem? Yes. There's a reason they sell basic stand-alone calculators, too, and it's not just price. There's a reason the ones for various tasks don't all look the same or have the same keys (a typical office desktop calculator is usually very basic, for instance). I'd bet money most calculators that exist are the fairly basic variety, not a fancy scientific calculator or whatever. Exclude the ones that were only ever used in school and never anywhere else and I bet it's an absolute landslide in favor of simple calculators. People are confused by the extra buttons, and don't want them. [EDIT] Not to shit on this calculator, mind you, but this is another specialized one that won't be for everyone, not a universal solution.
  • chacha21 5y ago
    We will somewhat disagree, partly because I can't help using calculators as a scientist, so my opinion is particularly biased. However, I don't like the trend to hide everything that looks technical. On the long run, letting people play with advanced features (that won't break things) is a win-win.
    • TheDudeMan 5y ago
      MacOS is really bad abut this sort of thing. It fails on discoverability. For instance, how do you navigate to a hidden folder in the file-selection dialog? There is no option to show hidden, and there is no place to input the exact path. You must know two things to proceed: That there is a secret hotkey to allow exact path specification, and what that hotkey is. It took me years to learn that there was a hotkey -- I just assumed that it was not possible.
      • isoprophlex 5y ago
        Isn't the macos of 2022 just a very shiny thing to browse the web with, plus a linuxy terminal? I always do file operations from the terminal if I can help it (won't save you when you need to select a file in a gui I suppose) 10+ years of owning macs, and Finder still bugs the hell out of me.
• olliej 5y ago
  This seems like it’s not a “for everyone” calculator, and built in OS calculators are always going to go “simple desktop calculator” design as that’s what the vast majority of people want or need. That said I just type equations into spotlight - it doesn’t handle user defined functions, graph results, or anything, but it has a reasonably full suite of the standard arithmetic functions and operators
  • chacha21 5y ago
    You know what ? I was not even aware that it would work ! (Am I the only one to discover that just now ? I am not using Spotlight very often) It's kind of cool, but I can still find many grievances about the way it's done :-)
    • olliej 5y ago
      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 :)
      • chacha21 5y ago
        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.
        • olliej 5y ago
          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 :)
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• jph 5y ago
  Superb! I downloaded Chalk then did your donation button. Your calculator is excellent, and your write-up is so thorough that it works as a case study for UI/UX. Thank you.
• 29athrowaway 5y ago
  This looks more like a CAS.
• Sophira 5y ago
  My favourite desktop calculator so far is Qalculate![0] for similar reasons, and I basically never have the keypad shown. It uses libqalculate, which also provides an executable version that's usable on the console, which I also use often. It's incredible and I love it. [0] https://qalculate.github.io/ https://qalculate.github.io/
  • chacha21 5y ago
    Thanks to Show HN I will be given tons of links to softwares I would never have found by myself :-)
  • sprash 5y ago
    This also has a nice command line interface for those who prefer the terminal.
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  • tejohnso 5y ago
    I'm also using Qalculate! and never had an issue with it. Maybe I don't require complex enough calculations but whenever I want some quick basic math, it's a quick keybinding away and there's a history screen below the input screen so sometimes I don't even have to type anything to see the answer.
• im_down_w_otp 5y ago
  This is exceptionally cool. It feels like what would happen if one were to fastidiously reimagine the HP 48 user experience for the desktop (in terms of usage patterns, mental model, etc.). I will 100% use this. However, you can take my HP 48GX when you pry it from my cold, dead hands. :-)
• codedokode 5y ago
  I also noticed that digit keys on keyboard in desktop calculators are useless - why would you type in numbers by clicking? It's very slow.
  • saila 5y ago
    They're useful to some people for accessibility reasons.
    • fhrow4484 5y ago
      As well as touch screens! Accessibility-wise, it gives user choice between on-screen keyboard and the app native one These days many devices can be used in touchscreen only mode (Microsoft surface etc), so keeping the digits makes even more sense there.
• omaranto 5y ago
  Looks very cool, congratulations! Have you tried Emacs Calc? Chalk reminds me of Emacs Calc, but without the symbolic computation (and without date calculations or anonymous functions).
  • chacha21 5y ago
    I don't use Emacs, but I feel that people should just have access to a decent calculator without digging developer forums. As good as Emacs Calc is, we can admit that it's unlikely to be seen as an easy-to-find lightweight tool.
    • omaranto 5y ago
      I'm not sure what you mean by "digging developer forums", but I fully agree with you that Emacs Calc is not a good choice for everyone, in fact, I would not recommend it to anyone that isn't already an Emacs user (but for people who are already Emacs users I do highly recommend it, since it has a ton of functionality and is an easy-to-find lightweight tool ---if you're already in Emacs anyway). I was just curious to see if you had tried it, since it seems similar in spirit to your project, and thought you might be able to borrow some ideas from it.
• p0nce 5y ago
  If you are after _weird_ Calc alternative for Windows, I use this one all the time: http://graindolium.paradisia.net/applicat/GrainCalcul.rar http://graindolium.paradisia.net/applicat/GrainCalcul.rar just because it lets you use the keyboard instead.
• reportingsjr 5y ago
  I definitely agree with a lot of the complaints. I truly don't understand why so many computer calculator interfaces are so awful. I've been using speedcrunch for a couple of years now and it scratches most of the itches for what I want out of a calculator. It looks fairly similar to Chalk's design as well. Very nice interface!
  • ducktective 5y ago
    speedcrunch is simply underrated. ticks so many checkboxes
  • raron 5y ago
    +1 for SpeedCrunch For anything more complex there is SageMath and Jupyter notebook.
  • Froedlich 5y ago
    Another + for speedcrunch, a tool I didn't know I needed until I discovered it.
  • keithnz 5y ago
    I really like speedcrunch also, another really cool calculator that is more of a language is Frink https://frinklang.org/ https://frinklang.org/
• throwaway81523 5y ago
  Interesting but I notice that the Emacs calculator (calc.el) isn't in the comparison. It is what I use for quick calculations most of the time. There was also a Mac program called Milo a long time ago that was very cool. I never had a chance to study it though.
  • kqr 5y ago
    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.
    • chacha21 5y ago
      I agree, but as good as it is, this is not where people would like to find a good calculator.
      • deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      • CydeWeys 5y ago
        How is an OS not a good place to find a calculator?
      • kqr 5y ago
        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.
  • skavi 5y ago
    A fun story regarding Milo. https://www.pacifict.com/Story/ https://www.pacifict.com/Story/
• criddell 5y ago
  I still enjoy using a good handheld calculator. Today it's an HP 35s which is fine but I only bought it because my HP-28s battery door broke. I'd love to get one of the Swiss Micros[1] but I can't really justify it when my 35s is good enough. Maybe if I get a nice bonus this year I'll treat myself. [1]: https://www.swissmicros.com/products https://www.swissmicros.com/products
• jdeaton 5y ago
  I still use the python repl in a terminal for my desktop calculator. Its a good choice since usually im already in the terminal anyways.
  • savant_penguin 5y ago
    I also do the same although when I need fractions, having to type all the words to import and use the fraction module is a pain
    • actually_a_dog 5y ago
      Why not just save those words, and other commonly used words to a startup file? Then, you can just do export PYTHONSTARTUP=/home/savant_penguin/.python/startup.py and those things will be automatically loaded for you. (Edit: add that line to your .bashrc if you want to use it all or most of the time!) If you don't want them always loaded, but rather just for a "calculator mode," you can do something like alias pycalc='PYTHONSTARTUP=/home/savant_penguin/.python/ipython startup_calc_mode.py' If you use ipython, then you can take advantage of autocomplete and not have to type as much, too.
      • colpabar 5y ago
        Thank you for this!!! I use the repl all the time and had no idea I could do this.
        • actually_a_dog 5y ago
          You're quite welcome. After 7+ years of using Python professionally, I find I'm still discovering things I didn't know. And, I'm not referring to just new stuff that gets added, either. It's cool to pick up on these little things every once in a while.
      • savant_penguin 5y ago
        This is a really nice idea. Together with some from fractions import Fraction as F would be even better Thanks
• w0mbat 5y ago
  I got fed up with all these complicated calculators and re-implemented the original Mac calculator desk accessory at https://CalculatorDA.com https://CalculatorDA.com. It does the simple things I need while giving me a nice nostalgia buzz.
  • CharlesW 5y ago
    A fun story about how that original Mac calculator came to look the way it did: https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Calculator_Construction_Set.txt https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Calculator_Const...
    • w0mbat 5y ago
      Thanks! That story was part of my inspiration. I gave my Calculator DA a lot of visual toggles in the View menu so you can find your way to the look that makes you happy, like Steve did.
      • CharlesW 5y ago
        Cool!
  • AdamH12113 5y ago
    I have been carrying around a copy of the Windows XP calculator ever since Microsoft decided that nobody can do both decimal values and decimal <-> hex <-> binary conversion without having to go through a menu to change modes. With the XP calculator, I use F5-F8 as shortcut keys for changing bases whenever I want. The Windows 10 calculator doesn't even do anything with those keys in scientific mode.
• wjdp 5y ago
  Looks to be Mac only, any good cross platform alternatives?
  • georgia_peach 5y ago
    SpeedCrunch is nice. http://www.speedcrunch.org/download.html http://www.speedcrunch.org/download.html
• madrox 5y ago
  The history of the OS calculator is rooted in skeumorphism to look like the pocket calculators of the 90s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calculator https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calculator I doubt any OS calculator got built through a modern software development process.
  • dboreham 5y ago
    70s
• eliah 5y ago
  I'm surprised no one has mentioned Soulver yet (https://soulver.app/ https://soulver.app/). I have used it for years -- it looks like it has pretty similar functionality to this but (IMO) with a more native-feeling UI. I love it. I don't think it supports as wide a range of math, but it does seem to pass the accuracy test given in the article (sin(exp(37))). It also lets you assign variables which I find handy. On the other hand, the propagation of uncertainty in Chalk is very cool.
  • ytjohn 5y ago
    I haven't seen Soulver, but it looks very similiar to the one I use on Mac, called Numi. On Android, I use an app called CalcNote which works in a similiar way. Neither does graphing, but you can do common formulas and functions like cos/sin/rad. I use numi for simple calculations, and find it fantastic when I'm trying to figure out project stuff. A recent use is entering wall dimensions to figure out square footage and compare different building materials. I often leave most of my old calculations in numi like a long-lived numerical memory. https://numi.app/ https://numi.app/ https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.burton999.notecal.pro https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.burton999....
    • nathan_phoenix 5y ago
      Thanks for the Android app recommendation, it's amazing! Basically numi on Android, love it!
• operator-name 5y ago
  There's been a lot of suggestions for alternative desktop calculator programs that try to remedy some of the issues outlined. I've had similar experiences/annoyances with calculator apps, most of which to copy handheld calculators but without the satisfaction of buttons yet the power of a programming repl/solver. I've currently settled on MathLab's Graphing Calculator[0] which has very similar design elements for any larger scale calculations. My second choice if the calculation requires estimates or units is obviously Wolfram Alpha, but the need for connectivity, lack of calculation history and speed leaves it lacking as a quick calculation tool. [0]: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=us.mathlab.android.calc.edu https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=us.mathlab.and...
• myhf 5y ago
  Lots of cool functionality in Chalk. I love it. The main thing I use Google search calculator for is natural-language unit conversions like "2 gigabytes / 128 kibibits per second in days" which is not in scope for Chalk, but there's a nice desktop calculator called Soulver that is good at that kind of thing.
• fastflo 5y ago
  $ python >>>
• Dylan16807 5y ago
  Looks cool, though I can't really use it. Typo in the boolean section, one of the 'certainly OR false' results on the chart says 'unlikely'.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• DiabloD3 5y ago
  I totally get this. The number of times I quakemode a terminal just to run bc is insane.
• orbital-decay 5y ago
  I love the ground-up design. However, i feel that in-place operations are missing from your rationale. Good algebraic calculators are typically able to 1/x or invert anything on the screen with one button without breaking the input flow, and repeat operations for the same left- or right-side operand by pressing =. This massively reduces the time spent on certain guesstimations when doing napkin math.
  • chacha21 5y ago
    You can achieve that, this is a preference of Chalk about what should be the next input
• tpoacher 5y ago
  LaTeXit looks great, I'll have to try it next time I'm on a computer. Currently I use Anki for the same effect.
  • tpoacher 5y ago
    Oh. This is mac specific. Nevermind... :/
• karmakaze 5y ago
  I never use the macOS calculator app. I enter my expressions into Google search. I can't be the only one who does this. I would appreciate a better online calculator than Google web search. What do others use, WolframAlpha?
  • seanw444 5y ago
    If we're talking online, WolframAlpha is amazing. Used to use it all the time. Now I use Emacs Calc, since it's built right into Emacs (a keybind away), and it's pretty nice and featureful.
    • buescher 5y ago
      I like Wolfram Alpha a lot but google's calculator is faster and does a very good job with units analysis.
  • crobertsbmw 5y ago
    I open up a Python shell window probably 20 times a day to do simple maths…
    • seanw444 5y ago
      I recommend https://insect.sh https://insect.sh (you can install it through NPM to use it locally). Does simple maths well, does functions, does units, does conversions... pretty cool shell calculator.
  • sleepybrett 5y ago
    the spotlight search bar also does math
• exabrial 5y ago
  Obviously needs social network integration.... /s "OS providers seem to have forgotten that a "computer" should be used to COMPUTE"
• shhsshs 5y ago
  I love this, great idea! I don't need the majority of the fancy features but I can see the use case for them. I built my own calculator app a while ago [0]. I've used an HP-41C as my main calculator for many years and I have not yet found a good RPN calculator app available on ALL platforms. I wanted a simple calculator that felt like an HP-41C that I can use on my phone + all desktop operating systems and get the same experience. [0] https://github.com/shamus03/ralc https://github.com/shamus03/ralc (if you're on desktop, it looks much better if you install it as a PWA and resize to your preferred size)
  • layer8 5y ago
    I like it, except that the Enter symbol confuses me. I associate it with a windowing button or on/off switch. I probably would use ⏎ (U+23CE) instead.
    • shhsshs 5y ago
      Good suggestion. I chose that symbol because it is literally called "ENTER SYMBOL" but maybe something more universally accepted would be better.
  • jimbosis 5y ago
    Have you seen Free42, "...a re-implementation of the HP-42S Scientific Programmable Calculator and HP-82240 Printer?" [0] It is available for Android, iOS, Windows, macOS, and Linux. (At one point there was even a version available on Windows Phone 8.) Perhaps it checks your boxes of good RPN calculator, available on all platforms. I don't know how much an HP-42S feels like a 41C. In any event, thank you for ralc. I've off and on been searching for a nice web-based RPN calculator. [0] https://thomasokken.com/free42/ https://thomasokken.com/free42/
• algon33 5y ago
  Any chance for a windows version? Or a mobile app? The usecase for a mobile app is more plausible, even given that this is already a great idea.
• mncharity 5y ago
  > Some much needed features are difficult to implement and require a large amount of work. If these features are not available, this is because nobody really cares, and there are few pre-existing parts to build upon. Some things resemble "nobody really cares", but are distinct. Being unaware (eg "I didn't realize how bad it was until it stopped"). Being impoverished (eg "Any cost, including attention, is an insurmountable cost barrier", or as in education, a chain-of-care disaster triage). And so on. The "few [...] parts to build upon" is indeed a mechanism for "large amount of work". Yay patents./s But there are others, and subtleties. For example, one can lack a part to build upon, because there are lots and lots of similar parts available, but all are variously not fit for purpose, or are collectively hiding the existence of a part that is - a prohibitive discovery cost (also effort dissipation). Or recursively, a part might not have been built, because its multiple potential uses have not been gathered to incentivize it, or a part it in turn needs - an economic communication failure. All our usual dysfunction. I emphasize this because the "nobody really cares" model can be very attractive, but also very misleading. It can be a wonderful fit for observations, and predictive of further observations of the undisturbed system, while also being a very poor model for planning and predicting interventions. For example, from kindergarten to undergraduate, introductory astronomy content tells students the simply wrong color for the Sun. In some sense, "nobody really cares" is an excellent description. Not teachers, professors, authors, publishers, reviewers, parents or students. But... they could care. Individually, it's not too hard to flip their state. And it's possible to imagine interventions with broader impacts. But we collectively don't get to it, for all the diverse reasons things aren't gotten to. Much of science education dysfunction is like that. Because "nobody really cares" that it succeeds... sort of, kind of, but also no - that's very not a root cause analysis.
• CrendKing 5y ago
  The one thing I don't get about all those calculator applications is the existence of the keypad. Like, the users already have the keypad right in front them called keyboard (the names literally share the "key" part). Why would anyone instead choose to use mouse to click those tiny buttons? I feel most calc designers still stuck at the skeuomorphism and never jump out of the box to think about what user really needs. The only calculators I know that makes keypad optional/hideable are SpeedCrunch and Qalculate!, and now this.
  • xupybd 5y ago
    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.
    • sidpatil 5y ago
      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.)
      • xupybd 5y ago
        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.
  • mewse 5y ago
    “skeuomorphism” isn’t even a real UX concept; it’s just been carefully designed to look like one.
    • Bud 5y ago
      Well played.
  • fendy3002 5y ago
• Hnrobert42 5y ago
  Alfred has a pretty good calculator for Mac that acts like the Google calculator without the need for internet connection.
• zelon88 5y ago
  To be honest I read all the materials, 85% of the blog post, and your website and you still have not told me WHY software calculators are wrong. You drone on and on and on. I'm 15 minutes into this rant of yours and I know all your personal preferences about pocket calculators and software calculators and yet no evidence to suggest why your design is actually better. No evidence to suggest that existing calculators are incorrect. Can you please provide a real TL;DR where you provide hard proof that popular software calculators are incorrect?
  • shhsshs 5y ago
    The TLDR as I understand it: - Most software calculators take up too much space. You don't need buttons on the screen, your keyboard already has the buttons. - Software calculators don't often give good feedback of what digits/buttons are being pressed. Physical calculators keep the keys and the display in the same small visual space: you can see the buttons you're pressing and the screen at the same time, and you have good haptic feedback. Software calculators force you to trust yourself to type the exact numbers/operations you want, or look back and forth between your keyboard and the screen, which is slow. The other alternative is using the mouse to click every button, which is also slow. And three of the requirements the author lists for a "good" software calculator: - The calculator should not compute until you validate the full expression. - The calculator should display the expression during input, and allow you to correct any typing error you notice. - The calculator should display the expression that has actually been evaluated. (end of TLDR) Now my own opinion: an RPN calculator with a visible stack is more than enough to solve the problems that motivate points 1 + 2.
    • tqi 5y ago
      Using spotlight search to do calculations meets all 3 requirements, no?
    • chacha21 5y ago
      RPN is just an option (provided by Chalk). The "minimalist" GUI is just the introduction of the full article. You have to reach <https://chachatelier.fr/chalk/article/chalk.html#toc-36 https://chachatelier.fr/chalk/article/chalk.html#toc-36> to go deeper into numerical problems of usual softwares. Once again, Chalk is not the best software ever, it is just what I have to build myself to fix the problems I usually encounter. Not to say that all other softwares are equally bad, but to my knowledge, none of them will address as much limitations at the same time.
• Phrodo_00 5y ago
  This is very similar to qalculate[1]. It shares a lot of the same features and design decisions [1] http://qalculate.github.io/ http://qalculate.github.io/
• tedmiston 5y ago
  I 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?
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  • chacha21 5y ago
    Just a zip on the web page
• saeranv 5y ago
  Halfway 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 bring to the table.
  • chacha21 5y ago
    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.
• slaymaker1907 5y ago
  What I usually end up doing is just using python3 (specifically not python2 because I think python3's handling of division is better for general use). I haven't finished reading your article, but it's really good. I really like that I can open up my "calculator" and use it with just the keyboard, plus it has an immutable history and variables. Does anyone know of a good RPN calculator for Android? I currently use RealCalc, but it isn't nearly as good as PCalc on iOS. I particularly liked that PCalc was programmable with custom functions.
• ncmncm 5y ago
  I don't understand this. What do /bin/bc or /bin/dc lack? (It was hard to tell from the article, because most of the graphics did not load.) A good thing about these bin tools is that you can cut and paste from a text editor, for scripting, and you get a transcript. And, GNU readline works, for history.
• EnderShadow8 5y ago
  I just use a Python or Node shell as a calculator. It usually works well enough.
• dracodoc 5y ago
  I used to use a firefox addon which have nice expression input and history. Firefox updates killed so many good addon, even yesterday the 97.0 is disabling my addon again. Now I just keep a RStudio window open.
• chazeon 5y ago
  Because of some reason discussed in the article I like unix's bc and also hoc when avaliable (through plan9). It would be nice if these two could also be included in the comparison.
• albertzeyer 5y ago
  I use IPython frequently for such simple calculations.
• perryizgr8 5y ago
  The best calculator I used on desktop was the Powertoys Calculator. They had the data entry nailed.
• g8oz 5y ago
  For Linux and Bsd a good calculator repl I've used is Genius. https://flathub.org/apps/details/org.gnome.Genius https://flathub.org/apps/details/org.gnome.Genius
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• Zykinii 5y ago
  My current desktop calculator is actually the PopOS launcher. Support constants, every function I need and even unit conversion.
  • kalleboo 5y ago
    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.
• icodestuff 5y ago
  So I love the concept, but the execution is kinda buggy, at least on macOS 11.6.3. I opened it and typed 1+<mash on top row of keyboard around 190 digits><return>. 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?
  • chacha21 5y ago
    Chalk is kind of robust, I am surprise you hit a bug at first use. Go to <https://chachatelier.fr/chalk/chalk-contact.php https://chachatelier.fr/chalk/chalk-contact.php> for bug reports
• laacz 5y ago
  If 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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_Polish_notation 2: Google search: https://www.google.com/search?q=rpn%20calculator%20online https://www.google.com/search?q=rpn%20calculator%20online 3: DDG: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=rpn+calculator+online https://duckduckgo.com/?q=rpn+calculator+online
  • chacha21 5y ago
    Chalk has an option to use RPN
    • laacz 5y ago
      Awesome. Got lost in the long article, so missed that.
• darnir 5y ago
  The website layout is absolutely broken on Firefox on Android.
• mbar84 5y ago
  I have a script bound to a hotkey. User experience: <hotkey> 1+1<enter> exit<enter> $ cat ~/bin/ipy ipython -i -c "import itertools as it; from statistics import ;import functools as ft;import operator as op;import io;import pathlib as pl;import pandas as pd;import numpy as np;from math import ;import enum;import re;import sys;import os;import json;from collections import defaultdict, deque, Counter;import random;import decimal;import fractions;from time import time;import datetime as dt;import shutil;import subprocess as sp;import uuid;from hashlib import sha256, sha1, blake2b, blake2s"
  • boneitis 5y ago
    You have just upped my game. No longer will I hand-type my imports when I need to bust out the Swiss army knife and type a quick (now lightning-fast) calculation. Don't know why I didn't do this sooner. For anyone needing more inspiration, here is some pseudocode for my version (which also has accompanying print()'s in the live script as a reminder of what my imports are): >>> from base64 import b64encode as be, b64decode as bd;from binascii import hexlify as hexl, unhexlify as unhexl;from Crypto.Random import get_random_bytes as grb;from Crypto.Random.random import randint # PARAMS (a, b) INCLUSIVE;from Crypto.Hash import SHA1, SHA256;from urllib.parse import quote, unquote
• uranusjr 5y ago
  Off topic, but FYI I thought your page was broken when it’s loading on my phone. All I could see was the table of contents, the main text is barely visible (like 10px) on the very right edge of the screen. The TOC didn’t close until everything is loaded, which took a few seconds for me for some reason (probably bad network on my part). Perhaps making the TOC hidden by default with CSS and open it later would be better UX, not sure.
• veysiertekin 5y ago
  Alternative: why not use casio emulators? https://education.casio.co.uk/download-emulator-cw https://education.casio.co.uk/download-emulator-cw https://education.casio.co.uk/emulator-free-licences https://education.casio.co.uk/emulator-free-licences (Looks like they are Windows binaries, didn't try on WineHQ tough)
  • veysiertekin 5y ago
    Quickly tried free versions on CrossOver for Mac, works pretty well: https://imgur.com/a/bnTLqbm https://imgur.com/a/bnTLqbm
  • veysiertekin 5y ago
    Looks like Casio has Mac binaries as well (paid): https://edu.casio.com/softwarelicense/index.php https://edu.casio.com/softwarelicense/index.php