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Qalculate – A multi-purpose cross-platform desktop calculator
- curiousfab 3y agoFantastic tool. It also has a command line version which has almost completely replaced `bc` for me.
- jstanley 3y agoThe most annoying part about bc is always having to type "scale=5" before you start otherwise it makes you think all your answers are integer.
- danadam 3y ago"bc -l" runs it with scale set to 20. Also preloads some math functions.
- mnw21cam 3y agoThe word "some" is definitely an exaggeration here.
- gavinhoward 3y agoNot on my bc. [1] If it's missing anything you need, let me know. [1]: https://git.gavinhoward.com/gavin/bc https://git.gavinhoward.com/gavin/bc
- mnw21cam 3y agoOoo, nice. Has there been any interest from any distros for including it in (for instance) Debian?
- gavinhoward 3y agoIt's in some distros, but Debian for one has not been interested. It's in Gentoo (can be selected as the main bc), Void, Alpine, and a few others. I think there's also a Nix package? If someone's willing to go to bat for me to get it into Debian, I'll do the package myself.
- fuzztester 3y agoWhat danadam said. Also: https://www.gnu.org/software/bc/manual/html_mono/bc.html#TOC23 https://www.gnu.org/software/bc/manual/html_mono/bc.html#TOC... Environment variables BC_ENV_ARGS
- drbig 3y agoIt is a very versatile piece of software indeed. The minimal mode window is a great pop-up calculator that can do a lot, including conversions and working with physical units. Highly recommend!
- integricho 3y agoNot to criticise the application, but how realistic is that such an application weighs ~70MB?
- procone 3y agoAre you really so strapped for disk space that 70MiB impacts your user experience? EDIT: The parent comment is disingenuous: the application isn't even 70MB. It's only 70MB if you download the windows edition with vendored libicu (unicode, 31MB) library. It weighs around ~20MB on linux distributions, which is insignificant.
- not_a_shill 3y agoEven worse this kind of critique is actively cancerous to new developers if they actually think that people outside of HN care about this. Development productivity over everything. Features matter not app binary size.
- integricho 3y agoI don't agree with this, not by a long shot, this kind of mindset is why we have such a cancerous proliferation of overbloated and slow software today and it's just getting worse and worse every day.
- not_a_shill 3y agoSo what? The tradeoff is that you make much less money with your mindset in exchange for impressing people on an internet forum.
- Beldin 3y agoThat mindset is why modern-day ultrabooks give the same practical performance as 15 years ago. All of the hardware advances have been gobbled up in the name of "developer productivity". Check (eg.) the Elevated 4k Demo winner to glimpse what modern computers are actually capable of in the hands of good developers.
- rom1v 3y agoThere is also the command line version: `qalc`. I use it since I discovered it.
- Aachen 3y agoSame. I was happy with `apt install calc` (I think nowadays called apcalc) for years because it does arbitrary precision and isn't as awkward as a python shell or so, but qalc is clearly a step up with support for units and solving $ calc 2^x=4 x is undefined $ qalc 2^x=4 ((2^x) = 4) = (x = 2) I used the above for determining after how many years a given inflation rate doubles a price (1.03^x=2) I think my most recent real-world application for units calculation was about how much energy a device uses in kWh after a year, given that it draws 10W during office hours: $ qalc 10W*(8h/day)*1year to kWh (10 * watt) * ((8 * hour) / day) * (1 * year) = 29.22 kW*h It even does time calculations: 13:37-08:00 tells you that you've been working for about 5.6 hours. I don't know why this isn't the universally used command-line calculator. I have it on my phone as well via a Debian subsystem and it's the best
- kbd 3y ago> $ qalc 10W(8h/day)1year to kWh Question: why didn't you need quotes around the first expression? Both Zsh and Bash error on that command without quotes. Are you using nushell?
- poetaster 3y agohmmmm. bash worked for me as was ?
- Aachen 3y agoOmitted for simplicity
- JNRowe 3y agoWith zsh you can call it with the noglob builtin¹, that way it doesn't try to parse the bracketed section as a globbing pattern; if that works for you, then you can simply "alias qalc='noglob qalc'" for future use. ¹ https://zsh.sourceforge.io/Doc/Release/Shell-Grammar.html#Precommand-Modifiers https://zsh.sourceforge.io/Doc/Release/Shell-Grammar.html#Pr...
- rnallandigal 3y agoI have it bound to `$mod+c` and launched as a floating window in i3. It integrates very well into my workflow as I can just quickly launch, perform a one-off calc, and close it whether I'm in a terminal or elsewhere. Since it saves history, I can always relaunch it and continue where I left off as well.
- nh23423fefe 3y agoi like the rpn mode
- kqr 3y agoHuh, yeah, it does do RPN. This is actually looking like a serious replacement for my current daily driver, Emacs calc.
- cyfex 3y agoI have `$mod+c` bound to rofi-calc [1] which I find even more convenient. 1. https://github.com/svenstaro/rofi-calc https://github.com/svenstaro/rofi-calc
- xchkr1337 3y agoI hve a global shortcut to open a Julia REPL session and I use that to perform any sort of quick calculations instead of a GUI calculator. The best thing about this approach is that I can always create new functions for stuff I use often.
- VadimPR 3y agoAre there prebuilt binaries available for macOS? I'm running the GTK version on an m1 and it always takes a few seconds to get going.
- 29athrowaway 3y agoAt this point just use a CAS or a TI calculator emulator.
- zzbn00 3y agoI also tend to just use a CAS, specifically maxima (either commandline, via emacs, via wxMaxima or via notebook, see https://github.com/robert-dodier/maxima-jupyter https://github.com/robert-dodier/maxima-jupyter ). It has the plotting, great units etc, and also incredibly handy to do things like a taylor expansion around a point with no effort. If not maxima, then the old M-x calc will usually do the job
- anagri 3y agodo you have a Mac installer available? also you need a designer. the website looks like from the 2000s. thanks for sharing the app.
- wffurr 3y agoA quick click shows that it’s available on home brew and Mac ports. I like the 2000s website style. It’s functional, simple, and loads very fast.
- eviks 3y agowhat the quick click doesn't show is that brew will require ~700mb of dependencies and still installs as a cli app, not an GUI app bundle
- pluijzer 3y agoYes this website needs a huge full screen video of models in business attire making calculations on a white board. When scrolling down I don't wish to find out what it does but would like some quotes from people saying how it changed their lives. Some transitions would be nice, the ones that make my fans spin, it gets cold here in the winter. Without it this website is barely usable.
- fuzztester 3y agoTotally. Along the same lines, I'm nearly Goad Complete (TM) with an amazing SaaS called Append-Slash-Ess as a browser extension. It does what you would expect, at the click of a mouse or touch of a finger, no need of keyboards, which are so last century. We aim to obsolete them so we can rake in, oops, take on our mission of improving the world. And since our team is made up of (literally) outstanding ex-Ghroaglers, we'll only support the Ghroan browser, of course. And it'll detect and reject others, for the benefit of everyone.
- doodpants 3y agoSo, you think the website would be better if it: - had low contrast text in a thin font - had pointless animations of content fading in as you scroll down - had a GDPR cookie consent popup - popped up an interstitial form asking for your email address so you could receive their newsletter, but only after you've had the site open for 30 seconds and were in the middle of trying to read it - was completely blank if you disabled JavaScript to try to avoid all of that nonsense No thank you; the current design is unironically perfect IMHO.
- cyfex 3y agoIt's a really great calculator for all sorts of stuff. I use many of the following almost daily: - currency conversion: `x USD to EUR` or `BTC to USD` - time calculations: `now - 27 hours` - unix epoch conversion: `timestamp(now - 3 days)`, also `stamptodate()` - unit conversion: `34 oC to oF` and more. Works really nicely with https://github.com/svenstaro/rofi-calc https://github.com/svenstaro/rofi-calc
- blondin 3y agoi wonder why calculator apps are so popular
- LispSporks22 3y agoI use calc mode in Emacs for that kind of thing. Any idea how the two compare?
- netbioserror 3y agoIf you want a lighter-weight package featuring a plaintext REPL, a large library of functions, function definition, arbitrary precision, and more (minus solver capability), give Speedcrunch a try: https://heldercorreia.bitbucket.io/speedcrunch/ https://heldercorreia.bitbucket.io/speedcrunch/
- lholden 3y agoI switched from Speedcrunch to Qalculate a while ago. I don't actually remember exactly why I switched at this point. (I think due to a lack of updates). Qalculate very similar in many ways, but I do like the interface on Speedcrunch better (after hiding the keyboard). The new UI for Qalculate has a similar enough feel to Speedcrunch that I've been happy with it.
- patrec 3y agoQalculate has a plain text repl (qalc), as well. And, as far as I know, all the other things you mention. Speedcrunch might be awesome for all I know (never tried it), but your comment does not really shed any light on why one would pick it over qalculate (what does "lighter-weight" mean? It's not like qalculate takes minutes to start up or is hard to use).
- ciupicri 3y agoThe plain text qalc doesn't compare with Speedcrunch. How do you copy & paste for example? Speedcrunch also has a shortcut for putting the result into the clipboard. You can make Speedcrunch look like a good old fashioned bc session, whereas Qalculate puts way too much stuff on the screen. It misses a simple REPL mode.
- tryptophan 3y agoI strongly prefer speedcrunch due to it opening much faster and being simpler. Qalc has poor documentation so I don't find learning its extra features to be worthwhile. Qalc is also awkward to type.
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- fuzztester 3y agoRealCalc free version from Quartic on Android is not bad. Not comparing it to Qalculate. And it has a really cool physical-world electronic calculator look, hence the name.
- freedomben 3y agoI use RealCalc on Android as well! Been handy to have for years. I bought the paid version and have been pleased with the purchase.
- michaelcampbell 3y agoDefinitely a purchase I have never regretted.
- georgeburdell 3y agoAs an engineer, I usually can just pop my expression into Siri/Spotlight or Cortana with a hotkey and get the result just fine. What kinds of calculations are people needing more for?
- discordance 3y agoCan you do dimensional analysis in Siri?
- georgeburdell 3y agoI’m not sure what dimensional analysis means in this context. Is this like “does N-m = kg x m2/s2”?
- dTal 3y agoIndeed, alongside all the other numerical calculations and symbolic manipulation... Example question: what is the diameter of a sphere of tungsten - in inches, say - that weighs the same as a human (say, 150 lbs)? Looking up the formula for the volume of a sphere gives: v = (4/3) pi (r^3), and googling the density of tungsten gives us 19.3 g/cm3. Great! Now we already have inches, centimeters, pounds, grams, a fiddly ^3 to trip up our unit conversion from cubic centimeters to cubic inches (or is it vice versa?), some rearranging of an equation to extract the 'r'... Luckily with qalculate, we can just smoosh it all together without thinking. We can substitute 'd/2' for "r", followed by 'x' for 'd' to tell qalculate that that's the quantity we want to figure out, and put it in inches while we're at it: v = (4/3) pi ((x/2 inches)^3) We're not after the volume but rather the mass, which is the volume times the density, and should equal 150lbs: 150 lb = (19.3 g/cm3) (4/3) pi ((x/2 inches)^3) Hit enter and: x ≈ 7.434184004 Amazing. A 7.4 inch cannonball of tungsten weighs as much as an adult human. Note that the result is only dimensionless because we balanced the equation - if we'd messed up any part of this formula, we'd have probably got our answer back in some perverse unit instead. Oh and we didn't actually need to look up the formula for the volume of a sphere: 150 lb = (19.3 g/cm3) sphere(x/2 inches)
- jnsaff2 3y agoI find it quickest to CTRL+SHIFT+K if I'm in the browser or run `iex` or `python3` in terminal to calculate something ad-hoc.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- eviks 3y agoThe "ultimate" calculator wouldn't use the same irrelevant-in-PC physical number buttons paradigm, taking up more than half of useful UI space
- icegreentea2 3y agoshrug when I ran it the first time, the default GUI is a menu bar, entry area and history. Like: https://qalculate.github.io/images/qalculate-qt.png https://qalculate.github.io/images/qalculate-qt.png
- eviks 3y agoand I got the screenshot advertized on the main page
- orbital-decay 3y ago> irrelevant-in-PC physical number buttons paradigm, taking up more than half of useful UI space Calling it irrelevant is a bit like calling vim irrelevant. Classic calculators don't use REPL, they are designed to minimize the number of keypresses required to input your problem and explore it in the intuitive manner. They use highly efficient modal input languages (kind of like vim). Besides being efficient, these languages tend to have one-off commands you have to remember. Having a cheatsheet on your screen by default is useful for discoverability. In the algebraic calculator paradigm and their typical use cases (napkin math), having a history is not very useful (unlike in RPN where having the stack on the screen is nice). That said, Qalculate is weird in that it uses a REPL and the input line, which is much slower and clunkier than the algebraic input, but still tries to mimic a classic calculator. It's also slow to start. Not sure what's its use case, as it offers neither speed of a classic calculator nor the feature set of full-fledged math software.
- eviks 3y agoThis doesn't make any sense, what kind of cheatsheet do you need to discover numbers on your keyboard??? What kind of efficient modal input language is it where you have to move your hands off the keyboard and move your mouse to press a button to insert a number?
- bityard 3y agoAnyone else just use the Python REPL as their desktop calculator?
- idanp 3y agoyes, with modifications - https://github.com/idanpa/calcpy https://github.com/idanpa/calcpy
- oneshtein 3y agobc -l
- freedomben 3y agoYes! (although ruby (irb) instead of python). It's amazingly useful to be able plug in expressions in a single line of text format. Though for more complex expressions, something like qalculate looks nice to me.
- nuxi 3y agoFor one-off simple calculations I just use awk, with this handy function in my .bashrc: function calc() { awk "BEGIN{print $*}"; } # usage in bash $ calc 'sqrt(25) + 2**3 - 17.17' -4.17
- ceving 3y agoHave Droid48 on my phone. I am infested and will never use a calculator without a stack.
- stonogo 3y agoThis program also supports rpn mode with a stack.
- amelius 3y agoIf this evolves a little further, you get Jupyter notebooks.
- akho 3y agoDoing units in Python is a pain. No easy RPN/stack mode. No flexibility in parsing. Vector, matrix, and date maths require weird syntax. No good concept of infinite number. Stuff it. I’m just reformulating https://qalculate.github.io/features.html https://qalculate.github.io/features.html ; you can do that yourself.
- FpUser 3y agoBeautiful piece of work. Kudos
- qwerty456127 3y agoLisp is the ultimate desktop calculator. But this one looks nice anyway.
- poetaster 3y agoI wanted to chime in as a calculator dev dude. Qalculate is really nice if you want the kitchen sink, which I do on the desktop. I also, depending on the task use speedcruch which others have mentioned. Using https://github.com/ArashPartow/exprtk https://github.com/ArashPartow/exprtk I have one calculator with a repl at 512kb, including a QML wrapper. I have a combined rpn calculator using sympy (based on the work of others) with exprtk as a 'programmer's calculator' on the side (https://github.com/poetaster/fibonacci https://github.com/poetaster/fibonacci). And several QML apps for symbolic CAS using sympy. I have way too many calculators. They are so much fun to build. Now I ask myself, port the Qalculate methods to macros for exprtk or check out using libqalculate? I'm not sure. exprtk is so light? And adding macros discrete.
- poetaster 3y agoI forgot to mention in my last comment that https://github.com/vetux/qcalculator https://github.com/vetux/qcalculator is also a nice qt based, exprtk using calculator with a python interface and higher floating point precision than plain exprtk.
- 6510 3y agoI'm told if you don't use floats the computer will explode and the whole city will burn down. End times, armageddon scenario pretty much.
- ghkbrew 3y agoThanks, I'll stick with Rstudio.
- despi 3y agoQalculate is great. I also use insect on the terminal for quick calculations or conversions https://insect.sh/ https://insect.sh/
- squarefoot 3y agoObligatory mention for bc, a command line arbitrary precision calculator and language. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bc_(programming_language) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bc_(programming_language)
- sombragris 3y agoI love qalculate. Now Slackware (my distro) ships libqalculate, and then it's trivial to build a frontend. I loved Qalculate back when it was a KDE3 application. In KDE4 times the UI switched to GTK+, but recently the dev added a newer Qt frontend which is really nice save for the fact that it doesn't have an app menu other than a hamburger menu not really accessible via keyboard; you must use the mouse for it. I'd love to see a KDE Plasma frontend again with the more traditional layout. The app is great and powerful.