Re: Request feedback for gcalctool feature request.

[Luis Villa <louie ximian com>]

On Mon, 2004-11-08 at 09:25 -0800, Rich Burridge wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> I've just received a great patch from Sebastien Estienne that adds an
> even more basic Basic mode to the gcalctool calculator. I've blogged
> about this. See:
> 
>   http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/richb/20041108#gcalctool_devolves
> 
> Your feedback is requested. Should we add this in as an extra mode 
> for GNOME 2.9/10? Should this replace the existing Basic mode?

I like it, but if you want to be revolutionary, I'd suggest looking at
qalculate:

http://qalculate.sourceforge.net/

truly a 'light' interface- enter the equation you want, hit enter. No
need to emulate the keys at all. 

Which, if you think about it, probably makes a lot of sense... I can see
an ideal calculator interface being basically a very good equation
editor + a solver, with the interface 'assuming' that you can type 2+2
from the keyboard instead of needing to mouse around to do it. All you
need to do is figure out a way to 'hint' to users that they are supposed
to just type it in, since many people are used to calculator emulation
(even though that is sort of silly.)

Luis (sort of sidetracking the original question, sorry, Rich ;)