Radio groups for angle unit and number base selection are gone now, in order to release some screen space. The very same options are available in a quickly reachable menu inside Settings and are also available through even faster keyboard shortcuts. Note that the previously available Clear and Evaluate buttons are also gone. Their actions are now available in the optional virtual keypad and through faster keyboard shortcuts as well.
For those who really like to preserve space, it's even possible to hide the menu bar. To show it again, a keyboard shortcut is available to perform the action (a tool tip is shown to warn the user about this).Let's now look at a full demonstration of all the optionally available visual elements.
You can see all the dock windows that were already available (nested and tabbed on the left and right side), a reworked virtual keypad and a new toy to play with: a mathematics book (floating on the right). One can browse it like a website and insert the formulas directly into the expression editor. If the required variables are already defined, the result will be calculated and presented.
And of course you can hide the virtual keypad again in order to get more space available for the docks. In the example, we can see a page for the quadratic equation. Currently there are additional pages for various 2D and 3D objects. If you want to contribute with more pages to enrich our book, just contact us. Physics and other areas are also welcome, not only plain mathematics. The pages are trivial to design (you can easily do it with the lamest text editor). We'll help you out with your first one. I must say they are also translatable (I always try to make sure everything is translatable :) So the book will be available in other languages, just like the rest of the application.In 0.10 it will also be possible to run SpeedCrunch in full screen mode (additionally to the stay-always-on-top mode). The mathematical core was also very much reworked and is better than ever. There are plans to introduce rational and complex numbers to the application. Not sure if for 0.11 or later, since 0.11's main focus will be a complete port for KDE4. Also still possible to be ready for 0.10 is the "portable" (as in take it with you) build. So then you just need to copy a directory to your flash drive and run your favorite calculator anywhere :)
2 comments:
Hi,
I want to thank you really much for the development of this SUPERB tool. I already talked to my coworkers in my company to use it and they find it really easy to use. My next objective is to take my boss away from his casio fx880 :-) and you can be sure I'll point him to the right alternative!
One think to ask is if it's planned to make it use of RPN notation (as in HP) in a near future or port it to Symbian OS.
Thank you again!
Francesc Farfán
Hi, Francesc. Thank you for the kind comment. RPN is indeed planned, but probably not before the next 3 or 4 releases, but that's just my guess today.
The Symbian port only depends on the availability of Qt on that platform. Since Nokia is going to acquire Trolltech, that can happen very soon, but nobody knows for sure what are the Nokia plans.
As for you boss, tell him I used to be addicted to my Casio FX880P myself :)
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