Calctor 1.3 | The Sandbox

TommyCarlier
I want my scalps!

Download:Link for Calctor 1.3(0 Bytes)

Calctor is an advanced calculator with a simple interface. You have an input-region where you enter your calculations, and an output-region where the results of your calculations automatically appear while you're typing.
Features include:

Saving your calculations
Copying the results
Exporting the results to HTML, RTF or text
A menu with access to relevant websites

Binaries only. If you want the source code, just send me an e-mail.

EDIT May 28th 2006: updated to version 1.1:

Optimized the parser
Changed the meaning of the % operator (now percentage instead of modulo)
Added synonyms for functions (abbreviations)
Added some functions: modulo, sign, exp, secans, cosecans, arcsinh, arccosh, arctanh, arccotanh
Added the option to auto scroll the output region
The output of an invalid expression now looks less threatening
Added license information to the Info-window
Calctor is now prejitted after installation, which should improve performance

EDIT June 3rd 2006: updated to version 1.2:

Fixed some bugs, and added some optimizations
Added some buttons to the header of the input-region
Added ² and ³ as synonyms for ^2 and ^3
Added some functions: gcd, lcm, addTimes, round(x, n)
Added a new menu to insert snippets
Added the function New from template, and a directory with some templates
Comments on a separate line are now also displayed in the output
Embedded URLs are converted to hyperlinks in the output

EDIT June 10th 2006: updated to version 1.3:

Fixed some bugs
Added a Clear-action, to clear the input region
Added some functions: arcsecant, arccosecant, secanth, cosecanth, arcsecanth, arccosecanth
Added missing functions to the snippets
Added some templates
Added formatters, to format a result: euro, dollar, yen, pound, percent, degrees

eckes
eckes

Hello Tommy,

this thing is cool. Creat user interface. Too bad it is in .NET 2.0, so it takes quite some time to start up. but I guess that problem will be resolved once there are more .NET tools on my desktop.

A suggestion, can you please add a license, so redistribution and usage is covered? Right now your installer prints a pretty freightening message, and you did not define who is allowed to use it when...

One suggestion for a setting: instead of printing "Unexpected end of Expression" it might be good to smply hide the result output (until somebody presses enter). It is just disturing to get red errors while you type.

Support for percentage would be good also:

100+5%
=> 105
200*10%
=> 20

Greetings
Bernd

TommyCarlier
I want my scalps!

You're right about the slow startup. I'll see if I can speed it up by NGEN-ing it after installation.

About the license: I hadn't noticed the message in the installer. It's apparently a default message. Don't worry about that: you can copy it and distribute it all you want to. You can even decompile it or use Reflector on it. As long as you don't sell it or modify it and pretend you made it.

About the error messages: if I simply hide the result output, it's not always clear what's wrong. The error message usually tells you what's wrong. Maybe it's just something to get used to, maybe I need to find a better way to handle this.

About the percentage: I already use the % operator for modulo. Maybe I should change this, so % is a suffix for percentage, and I could implement modulo as a function, like this: m = modulo(10, 2).

Thanks for the feedback.

Sven Groot
My name has 9 letters. Coincidence? I think not...

TommyCarlier wrote:
About the license: I hadn't noticed the message in the installer. It's apparently a default message. Don't worry about that: you can copy it and distribute it all you want to. You can even decompile it or use Reflector on it. As long as you don't sell it or modify it and pretend you made it.

I pretty much always include a license.txt with my stuff. I use the BSD license, which is pretty much what you describe here.

eckes
eckes

TommyCarlier wrote:

About the error messages: if I simply hide the result output, it's not always clear what's wrong. The error message usually tells you what's wrong. Maybe it's just something to get used to, maybe I need to find a better way to handle this.

Thats why I have suggested you dont display the result line unless the expression is valid, or if somebody types enter.

Oh another thing i noticed, the output log is not auto scrolling to the end on my installation. Do you have a RSS feed or maillinglist for updates?

Gruss

Bernd

TommyCarlier
I want my scalps!

Good suggestion. What I'll do is this: as long as an expression is invalid, it is displayed in the output, in red, but without an error message or result.
The auto scrolling might also be useful. I'll see if I can make this optional.
About the RSS feed: you have multiple options. You could either subscribe to this thread's RSS feed, or to my blog's feed, where I also post updates.

TommyCarlier
I want my scalps!

I updated Calctor to version 1.1:

Optimized the parser
Changed the meaning of the % operator (now percentage instead of modulo)
Added synonyms for functions (abbreviations)
Added some functions: modulo, sign, exp, secans, cosecans, arcsinh, arccosh, arctanh, arccotanh
Added the option to auto scroll the output region
The output of an invalid expression now looks less threatening
Added license information to the Info-window
Calctor is now prejitted after installation, which should improve performance

Scott Bryen

Hey Tommy

Like what your doing here and i have a minor suggestion for you that you might like to add. How about a button on the input and/or output area headers next to the save button that clears the input and/or output area.

only a suggestion but if that area has lots of calculations in it then having that button would be quite useful. Big Smile

TommyCarlier
I want my scalps!

I'll probably add more buttons to the headers. If you want to clear the input region, you can press Ctrl+N, or choose 'New' from the 'Input' menu. Or you could press Ctrl+A to select all the input and press Delete to delete it all.

eckes
eckes

Thanks, like all of the improvements... except that the "percentage addition" which is a magic function of some old calculators work differently:

5+1% is not "5+0.01" but it is supposed to be a+b% = a*(1+b/100) so you can read "five percent more" (or less)

Gruss
Bernd

TommyCarlier
I want my scalps!

That would be really hard to implement into my current parser. What I can do is add a function addPct/addPercentage that looks like this:

c = addPct(a, b%)
c = addPercentage(a, b%)

Scott Bryen

Hey

It might be hard to implement but im not sure. How about support for binary, hexadecimal and octal calculations? So for example i would put in a decimal number such as 36 and you can highlight it and then right click and go convert to binary and it returns 100100 in the output area.

Just a thought Smiley

Scott B

TommyCarlier
I want my scalps!

I don't think Calctor is the kind of calculator that should do binary calculations. It's mostly based on floating-point calculations. But I like your idea of a powerful calculator specifically designed for binary calculations, conversions and logic. That might be one of my next little projects.

TommyCarlier
I want my scalps!

I’m still planning my next release, which will have some bugs fixed and these features:

More header-buttons
~~Fractions~~
² and ³ as shortcuts for ^2 and ^3
New functions: gcd (greatest common divisor), lcm (least common multiple), round (where you can specify the number of decimals), addTimes (addTimes(x, y) = x + x * y)
Insert-menu with all the constants, operators and functions
Templates and a lot of examples
Maybe support for RPN (reverse polish notation) in the input- and/or output-region

Are there other things you would like to see in one of the next versions?

TommyCarlier
I want my scalps!

I updated Calctor to version 1.2:

Fixed some bugs, and added some optimizations
Added some buttons to the header of the input-region
Added ² and ³ as synonyms for ^2 and ^3
Added some functions: gcd, lcm, addTimes, round(x, n)
Added a new menu to insert snippets
Added the function New from template, and a directory with some templates
Comments on a separate line are now also displayed in the output
Embedded URLs are converted to hyperlinks in the output

If you can think of useful templates to put in the Templates directory, just let me know.

Scott Bryen

Hey Tommy

How about some templates for the quadratic forumla, intergration and differentiation. Also maybe pythagorus theorem (Not sure if they are spellt correctly:P) Not sure if you want this calculator to do this but how about getting it to plot graphs maybe. If you could do that it would be awesome! Big Smile

Manip

I put it though a profiler, here are some problems methods:

ComponentFactory.Krypton.Toolkit.PaletteRedirect.GetBorderDraw()
ComponentFactory.Krypton.Toolkit.PaletteTriple.get_Border()
TC.Calctor.FormCalctor.OnShown()
System.Reflection.MetadataImport.GetName()

and then a long list of ComponentFactory.Krypton.Toolkit* calls...

Even if it has other problems, it is clear that the vast majority of the "slowness" is coming from your component library. You might want to consider 'tweaking' your library ...

----------------

I like the application SO much that I'm going to keep it around for "general" usage. Very cool, thanks.

Is there a way to configure the output? For example?

10% / 2
=> 0.05

But what if I wanted the output as a %? So 5%? Smiley

PS - CTRL-A works! Woot! Smiley

TommyCarlier
I want my scalps!

Is the application really slow on your machine? I'm sorry, but I can't tweak the library, since I didn't develop it. I'll do some tests myself, and see what I can come up with. About Ctrl+A: yeah, I miss that too in the default TextBox!

TommyCarlier
I want my scalps!

Scott, thanks for the suggestions. I'll look into those templates. About the graph plotting: I see Calctor as a powerful calculator, but still just a calculator. Someone suggested before to include boolean logic, but if I extend Calctor's scope to include these functionalities, I would have to artificially complicate it and its UI. And I don't want to do that. I could write a separate application that is totally dedicated to plotting graphs. Tools that only do 1 thing but do that 1 thing very well, are much better than tools that do many things but are not really good at it.