5 ms·

The best feature on the Mac's built in calculator is the paper tape (⌘+t) which I stumbled on ages ago while accidentally having the calculator open and trying

by quartz 4y ago

The best feature on the Mac's built in calculator is the paper tape (⌘+t) which I stumbled on ages ago while accidentally having the calculator open and trying to open a new tab in my browser. I always leave it open now and it has saved me countless times. Really with the iOS version had this feature built in as well.

faxmeyourcode 4y ago
Woah, thanks! This is an awesome feature I never would have found on my own
hn_throwaway_99 4y ago
Thanks for the tip! Interestingly, I found it weird how the app handles order-of-operations. That is, if you type 1 + 2 / 2, the answer shows up as 2 and the paper tape shows 1 + 2 / 2 = 2 However, if you type 1 + 2 = / 2 (that is, you type equals after the 1 + 2, which will show 3 on the screen, before typing the / 2 part), the last line of the paper type shows 1 + 2 / 2 = 1.5 They need to add some parentheses in there.
- contingencies 4y ago
  It's the accepted order of operation in maths that you resolve multiplication and division before addition and subtraction. While the single-value-view of a calculator removes visual context, if you are banging out multi-step calculations as a power user not having the standard order of operations would be odd. The workaround, as you say, is to just press enter (equals) after each required subtotal. This is pretty semantically clear, that is - if you consider a traditional keyboard to even be a thing that young people are familiar with - and that is getting arguable! Key corollary issues to the single-value-view nature of computer calculators are that they pull a lot of (now obtuse) cultural context from physical calculators plus regular mathematical context, none of which is obvious to occasional computer calculator software users. It's probably high time this stuff was rejigged. Thanks for the paper tape tip!
  - 5fOleL5Eo2So8qi 4y ago
    Their stated issue is that pressing enter after the 'subtotal' is not clear because it shows as `1 + 2 / 2` in the history instead of `(1 + 2) / 2`.
  - hn_throwaway_99 4y ago
    To be clear, I'm not arguing that the results from the calculator are wrong, and I totally agree that how it handles order-of-operations is correct. What I am arguing is that the visual display in the "Paper Tape" view is wrong because it displays different answers for the same values.
    - contingencies 4y ago
      Oh sorry totally missed that 5AM here :)
- nonsapreiche 4y ago
  or a /n
aasasd 4y ago
Android's calculator also has the history, invoked by pulling down on the display part. (Perhaps obvious to everybody here, but after the discussion on how the memory function is unclear to people, I'm not so sure.) Also that history is saved between launches, which happens to be extra useful for me.
- contravariant 4y ago
  Oh, that is useful. Now if only I could calculate the log of something by pressing 'log' that would be nice.
  - tzot 4y ago
    I think that my Android phone (a Chinese model with Android 11 Go) has the Android calculator, which IIRC was based on the old SGI Irix calculator. If to the right of the 4 basic operators +, -, ×, ÷ you have a vertical strip (greenish in my case), you can slide it to the left and have access to various other operators/functions, including log. Being based on the old SGI calculator, you can also slide any result to the left to get as many digits after the decimal point as you like. e.g. slide in the extra ops, press π, then start sliding the 3.1415… result.
    - aasasd 4y ago
      I think the guy was saying that you have to surround an expression with ‘log()’ to get the logarithm—which is inconvenient when it's a result of previous calculations and you have to shuffle the cursor around. Can't just slap ‘log’ and have the current expressions logarithmized. However, seeing as the calculator allows writing expressions with multiple operations, just shoving everything on the screen into ‘log()’ would be unreasonable, as one might want to provide the exact place for the logarithm themselves—so I guess the app does the most reasonable thing it can.
- paledot 4y ago
  No, I've been using the Android calculator for years and never realized that it could do that. This is the problem with "clever" UX...
kaushikc 4y ago
Thanks! This is handy.
wazoox 4y ago
Qalculate as such a feature and is my preferred calculator app :)

by quartz 4y ago

faxmeyourcode 4y ago

Woah, thanks! This is an awesome feature I never would have found on my own

hn_throwaway_99 4y ago

Thanks for the tip! Interestingly, I found it weird how the app handles order-of-operations. That is, if you type 1 + 2 / 2, the answer shows up as 2 and the paper tape shows 1 + 2 / 2 = 2 However, if you type 1 + 2 = / 2 (that is, you type equals after the 1 + 2, which will show 3 on the screen, before typing the / 2 part), the last line of the paper type shows 1 + 2 / 2 = 1.5 They need to add some parentheses in there.

contingencies 4y ago
It's the accepted order of operation in maths that you resolve multiplication and division before addition and subtraction. While the single-value-view of a calculator removes visual context, if you are banging out multi-step calculations as a power user not having the standard order of operations would be odd. The workaround, as you say, is to just press enter (equals) after each required subtotal. This is pretty semantically clear, that is - if you consider a traditional keyboard to even be a thing that young people are familiar with - and that is getting arguable! Key corollary issues to the single-value-view nature of computer calculators are that they pull a lot of (now obtuse) cultural context from physical calculators plus regular mathematical context, none of which is obvious to occasional computer calculator software users. It's probably high time this stuff was rejigged. Thanks for the paper tape tip!
- 5fOleL5Eo2So8qi 4y ago
  Their stated issue is that pressing enter after the 'subtotal' is not clear because it shows as `1 + 2 / 2` in the history instead of `(1 + 2) / 2`.
- hn_throwaway_99 4y ago
  To be clear, I'm not arguing that the results from the calculator are wrong, and I totally agree that how it handles order-of-operations is correct. What I am arguing is that the visual display in the "Paper Tape" view is wrong because it displays different answers for the same values.
  - contingencies 4y ago
    Oh sorry totally missed that 5AM here :)
nonsapreiche 4y ago
or a /n

aasasd 4y ago

Android's calculator also has the history, invoked by pulling down on the display part. (Perhaps obvious to everybody here, but after the discussion on how the memory function is unclear to people, I'm not so sure.) Also that history is saved between launches, which happens to be extra useful for me.

contravariant 4y ago
Oh, that is useful. Now if only I could calculate the log of something by pressing 'log' that would be nice.
- tzot 4y ago
  I think that my Android phone (a Chinese model with Android 11 Go) has the Android calculator, which IIRC was based on the old SGI Irix calculator. If to the right of the 4 basic operators +, -, ×, ÷ you have a vertical strip (greenish in my case), you can slide it to the left and have access to various other operators/functions, including log. Being based on the old SGI calculator, you can also slide any result to the left to get as many digits after the decimal point as you like. e.g. slide in the extra ops, press π, then start sliding the 3.1415… result.
  - aasasd 4y ago
    I think the guy was saying that you have to surround an expression with ‘log()’ to get the logarithm—which is inconvenient when it's a result of previous calculations and you have to shuffle the cursor around. Can't just slap ‘log’ and have the current expressions logarithmized. However, seeing as the calculator allows writing expressions with multiple operations, just shoving everything on the screen into ‘log()’ would be unreasonable, as one might want to provide the exact place for the logarithm themselves—so I guess the app does the most reasonable thing it can.
paledot 4y ago
No, I've been using the Android calculator for years and never realized that it could do that. This is the problem with "clever" UX...

kaushikc 4y ago

Thanks! This is handy.

wazoox 4y ago

Qalculate as such a feature and is my preferred calculator app :)