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Calculon - my new calculator widget

atari1356

atari1356

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Feb 27, 2004
1,582
32
I just released a new calculator widget into the wild last night, and am pretty excited about it.

It's called "Calculon"... it features a two line display (the top part shows the expression you're calculating, the bottom shows the answer), and has no buttons so it doesn't take up as much screen space as the Apple Calculator.

It also comes with 10 different colors, which you can choose after flipping the widget over. Here are some examples:

calc_silver.png


calc_blue.png


calc_orange.png


You can download it from the Calculon web site. Give it a try and let me know what you think. :)

(also, I'm aware that it's not quite perfect yet, since really long numbers can run off the edge of the LCD... but felt it was good enough to release. I'm working on fixing that issue)
 
I'll try this one out when I get back to a Mac, but I was wondering how it does on system resources. If I recall the standard Calc widget was something of a resource hog for something so simple... maybe that was a bug that was fixed early on, or maybe I am crazy... ?

Anyways, how is it for resource usage? I like the small footprint of yours, I don't need to see all the numbers on a calculator, I have a keyboard for that.
 
Switzermac said:
Submit it to Apple
Click to expand...

I have, it takes 3 - 5 business days for them to add it. So, hopefully it will be on their site early next week.
 
mrgreen4242 said:
I'll try this one out when I get back to a Mac, but I was wondering how it does on system resources. If I recall the standard Calc widget was something of a resource hog for something so simple... maybe that was a bug that was fixed early on, or maybe I am crazy... ?

Anyways, how is it for resource usage? I like the small footprint of yours, I don't need to see all the numbers on a calculator, I have a keyboard for that.
Click to expand...

If by resources, you mean the amount of memory it takes... then it uses up a little more than Calculator (mostly due to the fact that it includes 10 images that it keeps in memory).

However, if you compare them to other widgets memory usage, both Calculon and Calculator are on the lower end of the scale.
 
.:*Robot Boy*:. said:
Did you write it from scratch, or did you just chop the buttons off of the standard Apple calculator widget?
Click to expand...

I wrote it myself. There was no chopping or copying of code (except for the standard Apple code for flipping widgets over, and copying data to the clipboard). I actually started working on something like this long before Tiger was released... it was originally going to be a full fledged calculator application built with Objective-C/Cocoa... but I decided to wait for Tiger and Dashboard.
 
"Known bugs: doesn't separate numbers with commas (100000 should be displayed as 100,000)"

Shouldn't it be "100000 should be displayed in the international numbers format user choice"?

I, for one, set my stuff to use a dot for decimals and spaces for thousands/etc (commas are used to either separate numbers or to denote coordinates).

On my system, it should display "100 000".
 
Yvan256 said:
"Known bugs: doesn't separate numbers with commas (100000 should be displayed as 100,000)"

Shouldn't it be "100000 should be displayed in the international numbers format user choice"?

I, for one, set my stuff to use a dot for decimals and spaces for thousands/etc (commas are used to either separate numbers or to denote coordinates).

On my system, it should display "100 000".
Click to expand...

Interesting. Honestly, I've never seen numbers displayed that way... but it seems like a good option to have. Once I get around to dealing with the thousands marker, I'll look into implementing your suggestion.
 
atari1356 said:
Interesting. Honestly, I've never seen numbers displayed that way... but it seems like a good option to have. Once I get around to dealing with the thousands marker, I'll look into implementing your suggestion.
Click to expand...

You should be able to ask OS X itself for the format, there shouldn't be anything in the "setup" of Calculon for this.

That's one thing that really bugs me about the weather widget too: every time I start it, it defaults to Farenheit (there shouldn't be anything in the setup, it should ask OS X what I use for temperatures, i.e. "metric = celcius").
 
cheekyspanky said:
I like it, nice choice of colours - and takes up less space than the Apple one!

Keeping it on my dashboard :)
Click to expand...

Great! I'm glad you like it. :D
 
Wow, I was just thinking today how I wished Apple's Calculator widget didn't take up so much room in Dashboard! I will definitely use this. Thanks!
 
Neat widget; I may swap the default out for this one on my system.

Question (can't check as I'm not on my Tiger machine right now): Does it use standard algebra order of operation (3+3*3=12) or does it act more like a cheapie desk calculator and just do one operation at a time (3+3*3=18)? I'm hoping for the latter, as that's the way I reflexively use a "dumb" calculator...

Yvan256 said:
(there shouldn't be anything in the setup, it should ask OS X what I use for temperatures, i.e. "metric = celcius").
Click to expand...
No, it shouldn't; if it did, you'd have to go into System prefs to display temperatures in a different format, and there'd be no way to have two widgets in two different systems. As is, I can have Japanese temperatures in C and US temperatures in F (or switch around at will) which is exactly what I and I'm sure a few other internationally inclined users want.

Or, I might have my system in Metric but want my temperatures in F for some reason, etc.
 
Makosuke said:
No, it shouldn't; if it did, you'd have to go into System prefs to display temperatures in a different format, and there'd be no way to have two widgets in two different systems. As is, I can have Japanese temperatures in C and US temperatures in F (or switch around at will) which is exactly what I and I'm sure a few other internationally inclined users want.

Or, I might have my system in Metric but want my temperatures in F for some reason, etc.
Click to expand...
Why not just default to the system, with the option of the user setting a custom setting?

Simple and effective way to handle your situation and Yan's.

Sushi
 
Makosuke said:
Question (can't check as I'm not on my Tiger machine right now): Does it use standard algebra order of operation (3+3*3=12) or does it act more like a cheapie desk calculator and just do one operation at a time (3+3*3=18)? I'm hoping for the latter, as that's the way I reflexively use a "dumb" calculator...
Click to expand...

It uses the standard algebra order of operation, so your example of 3+3*3=12 is the way it works.

You could enter "3+3=" which would give you the answer "6", then type "*3=" to get the answer "18"... although I realize that's probably not as quick as the "dumb" calculator method.
 
I really like it! For doing something like summing a long string of numbers, this is really nice, because you can see whether or not you made a mistake.

Nice! Plus, it comes in pink. I guess I'm sold! :D

Plus, this is also the first time I've seen the 10.4.2 method of installing a widget. Very nice, how it puts a ring around the widget with keep/delete buttons, on first load.
 
Thanks for the positive feedback. :)

I updated the widget today and added support for parentheses so you can do calculations such as:

(3+3)*3=18

You can download the new version from the website.
 
great work. I use a 10-key a lot so i always have my calc on my dock. now that i can keep widgets on my desktop i use that ugly apple one. now...i can use yours! i would not even mind having an even thinner one. Maybe 14 pt high and 8-10 pt font.
 
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