[openbeos] Re: Calculator still needed?

On 10/7/06, Axel Dörfler <axeld@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: 
"Waldemar Kornewald" <wkornew@xxxxxxx> wrote:
> I agree that the calculator should look like a real calculator.
> That's
> also useful for touch-screen input and it helps to immediately
> understand how to use the app. A little pop-up button for inserting
> special functions and base conversion should be added, too, but I
> disagree that we should add menus. Do you want to add a menu just for
> two small functions? That's not worth it. Do you want to add menus
> for
> 10 functions? That's getting bloated. Let's not have menus. They
> introduce a way to add a lot of bloat and they're not worth being
> added just for two extra functions.

A menu for settings, compacted mode, about, functions, number base,
copy&paste, equation/result history, number conversions etc. - it could
have quite a number of useful items.
Some people are uncomfortable with right click only menus when they are
indeed no real context menus.


I think that DeskCalc should not have any user-visible settings. What
do you want to configure? The background color? The calculator could,
for example, store the last 100 or so calculations, so when you close
it and open it again you get to the same state as before. But this
doesn't require any user-visible settings.

Compacted vs expanded: I think that we should have a small ">>" and
"<<" toggle-button at the right border, for example (or two buttons
"expand" and "compact").

For number conversions I'd prefer having a drop-down menu integrated
into the results view. Inputting numbers in a different base could
work like "23914b16" (and "0x..." as a special case). The drop-down
menu would change the output format.

Most extra functions could be added in form of an "f(x)" or "special"
button placed next to the text input field. This would include
functions like "sin()", "copy"+"paste", and changing the base. IMHO,
this is better than a menu because it places the function directly
next to the affected item (the input field).

I also think that DeskCalc should not become a monster-app. We have
real math packages like "Maxima" or "Octave" for people who need to
calculate advanced stuff.

Bye,
Waldemar Kornewald

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