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List:       kde-usability
Subject:    RE: idea calculator
From:       "Jamethiel Knorth" <jamethknorth () hotmail ! com>
Date:       2004-07-15 6:23:19
Message-ID: BAY7-F50HsZM8FcleNi0000c1d1 () hotmail ! com
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>From: "Karasek, Tom" <tom.karasek@student.uni-siegen.de>
>Date: Wed, 14 Jul 2004 11:25:30 +0200
>
>this morning i was able to do some "social experiments", e.g. i watched a 
>user trying to use the windows calculator (but this problem is not limited 
>to the windows calculator). however, after some seconds, she got frustrated 
>and started to look for her 15 years old texas instruments.
>
>funny - there is this pentium 4 with 2,4 ghz, plenty of ram but you still 
>have to use the good old texas instruments for "23,4 x 77,3" ?
>
>so now my idea:
>
>there should be a hotkey which can be used in any kde-application, 
>preferably "=". hitting the "="-key should open a smal box with a textarea, 
>directly under your cursor (no window, just the textarea!) within your 
>application. hitting enter will insert the result into your 
>document/mail-client/messenger/whatsoever.

I do like this idea. I know that this can be done by the Run Command dialog, 
but that is not specifically for this purpose. Also, it does not make it 
particularly easy to insert into the current document.

I would want this to be added, but only if anyone was willing to spend the 
time to make it a proper tool.

My idea would be to have, when a user presses Alt+= or Win+=, a box appear 
over where they are currently typing. Have that box have some room to type 
in, a title on top which says "Quick Calculator" or something along those 
lines, and an option (probably at the end of the title) to extend into a 
full calculator.

At the end of the text entry field have a button for inserting into the text 
(probably an icon only).

If they type something in and press enter, a calculation will be done. If 
they hit enter again without typing in more, it will insert the text. This 
allows multiple levels of calculation, but still makes it easy to insert 
text. (Possibly, it would be better to have it insert the text if they press 
enter while there is a number only, not an equation, up)

Also, this might alleviate a problem I have seen with a few people (on 
MS-Windows, using that calculator): They seem to think that, since there are 
buttons on the screen, they need to click those. They do not realize that 
the num-pad is fully functional. If it starts with just a bar for entry, and 
possibly an instruction as to what to do (fade gray "type an equation"?) 
they will perhaps realize that they can function much more swiftly using the 
keyboard rather than the mouse.

Also, if such a tool is being made available, allow it to do conversions of 
units and other nifty tricks. For an example of what I mean, type "seven 
hundred and twelve feet in rods" into Google. It will reply with "seven 
hundred and twelve feet = 43.1515152 rods". It properly understands the way 
that words convert to numbers and different units convert to different other 
units. If I could use that in Kate, that would be great.

Also, if it worked through KDE above the app, it would also work with 
OpenOffice, which would be insanely nifty.

>if you need more complex operations, you still can fire up kcalc. does this 
>idea sound useful?

As you could see in my version of this idea, it can be expanded to a 
full-blown calculator, so it would completely replace KCalc. And, with 
conversions of units and interpretation of words, it would do a large 
superset of the features KCalc currently does.

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