[Synthetic Cartoonz]
On Sunday 17 July 2005 10:41, Anders Johansson wrote:
On Sunday 17 July 2005 16:02, John R. Sowden wrote:
I am looking for a calculator that, hopefully does not require megabytes o libraries, etc that gives me a virtual tape, base conversions, memory function, a few more features that a 4-banger. Couldn't google one.
He's looking for something that keeps a visible history like a paper tape. I too have wondered at the plethora of calculator proggys available and the lack of a visible history/virtual paper tape feature.
While undoubtedly much more than the original poster requested, GNU Calc, which requires Emacs underneath to run, has a virtual paper tape. This is likely the most wonderful calculator I ever used, and much used! It has so many commands that you should ideally skim over the tutorial, and become well acquainted from the start with its help features, which are fairly comprehensive. It has usual numbers, possibly with a lot of precision, complex numbers, intervals, normal approximated numbers, angles, times, vectors, matrices, and symbolic formulas. Besides basic arithmetic, including factorisation into primes, you can do statistical tests, regressions, matrix inversion, etc., as well as numerical or symbolic derivatives, summations, series, and integrals. And there are good hooks for using it within an editor (guess which! :-), or with TeX for superb output. Emacs is bundled with SuSE. So far that I remember, Calc has to be acquired and installed separately. For those needing it, it is well worth, in my opinion. There are better and more comprehensive tools than Calc, of course, but they are not calculators anymore! :-) -- François Pinard http://pinard.progiciels-bpi.ca