Re: Request feedback for gcalctool feature request.

[Shaun McCance <shaunm gnome org>]

On Mon, 2004-11-08 at 11:35, Luis Villa wrote:
> 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.)

Yes yes yes yes yes!  Why are we still stuck emulating one of the worst
hardware interfaces ever?  Graphing calculators have moved past the old
calculator interface; why can't we?

Now I'll say GtkMathView.

If people want to do this sort of thing, I have good advice on keyboard
shortcuts to ease the pain of typing real math.

--
Shaun