the calculator to end all calculators?

[timschmitz]

hello promethean planet type people. I've posted to these forums before, but not for ages sadly...

like most maths teachers, I've been looking for ages for a decent scientific calculator which I can use with ActivStudio.

unfortunately (as a lot of people are probably already aware) most onscreen calculators available around the internet are totally rubbish.

anyway, to cut a long story short I finally gave up and decided to write my own. and here it is!

http://www.timschmitz.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/calc.exe

my calculator looks just like the real thing, and will stay on top of other windows so it won't disappear. even better, it can evaluate expressions using mathematical order of operations. (trust me, to maths teachers this is a big deal!)

if anyone's interested feel free to have a look and let me know what you think...

Tim :)

[Daniel Bunker]

It looks great Tim. Thanks for sharing.

Are you willing to also share the swf file version for those wanting to embed the calculator into the page?

Thanks

Dan

[LisaD]

Please!! I use a Mac and an .exe is not for me!

Lisa

[timschmitz]

hmmm... I thought people might ask that :)

although I have the .swf file, I'm not sure if I'm willing to share it just yet... a lot of hard work went into this thing after all. sorry!

Tim

p.s. I appreciate the mac perspective, but unfortunately I am only one person with a fairly old windows PC. if someone can lend me a mac I'll be happy to try and make a mac version! :)

[wilcogirl]

I really like it!!! I use the smartview by TI, but this is great for quick calculations when you just want something quick. Great Job!!!![clap][clap][clap][clap][clap][clap][clap] Now we just need it to have some of those functions that the activstudio calc does like output to flipchart. It would be very helpful when calculating sin, cos and tan!!!!

[rexboggs5]

I just tried to access the file but received an error message - "502 Bad Gateway Error"

I tried both right clicking and "Save Target As" and left clicking to open it.

Any idea why I am running into these problems?

Cheers

Rex

[timschmitz]

hi again.

okay, to answer heather's question first: you can output the calculator's display text into a flipchart (sort of). although the calculator is not integrated with activstudio, there is a workaround:

- highlight the text on the calculator display
- press ctrl+c (to copy the text)
- right click on your flipchart
- select paste -> from clipboard -> text

this works most of the time although sometimes it will result in strange characters due to the fact that the calculator uses a specialized mathematical font. in the long run it's probably easier just to use the camera tool to take a snapshot of the screen.

for some reason my blueyonder webspace is not working properly at the moment so I've put the calc.exe file on a mirror site which you can try below. thanks for letting me know rex!

http://members.lycos.co.uk/timschmitz/calc.exe

hope this helps!

Tim

[Peter Lambert]

Is the font freeware? If users installed the font then there wouldn't be a problem with copy and paste.

[rexboggs5]

Tim, what a fantastic learning object. You little beauty! [clap] [clap] [clap][clap]

Rex

[wilcogirl]

hi again.

okay, to answer heather's question first: you can output the calculator's display text into a flipchart (sort of). although the calculator is not integrated with activstudio, there is a workaround:

- highlight the text on the calculator display
- press ctrl+c (to copy the text)
- right click on your flipchart
- select paste -> from clipboard -> text

this works most of the time although sometimes it will result in strange characters due to the fact that the calculator uses a specialized mathematical font. in the long run it's probably easier just to use the camera tool to take a snapshot of the screen.

for some reason my blueyonder webspace is not working properly at the moment so I've put the calc.exe file on a mirror site which you can try below. thanks for letting me know rex!

http://members.lycos.co.uk/timschmitz/calc.exe

hope this helps!

Tim
Thanks Tim. That is great. My kids will love it:p

[Gerard Sweeney]

Hi, Tim..

The Calculator looks great - I'll pass it onto the Maths staff at my school here.

Just purely out of interest..

What features (if any) are unlocked via the right-click, Unlock, enter serial code?

Cheers,
Gerard

[alydon]

great calculator, many thanks

[pwebster]

Please!! I use a Mac and an .exe is not for me!

Lisa

I use a linux machine (ubuntu 8.04) and it worked fine right out of the box. Have you tried it on your mac? It might take it. Linux and Mac OS both share the same family tree.

pw

[Mark Herbert]

I use a linux machine (ubuntu 8.04) and it worked fine right out of the box. Have you tried it on your mac? It might take it. Linux and Mac OS both share the same family tree.

pw
Are you using Wine on your linux machine perhaps? A Windows executable isn't going to work on a Mac out of the box.

I'd love to see a Mac version too.