Maybe CalcPad needs more examples to give people an idea what it is, since so far the only feedback on my beta is a recommendation for a competing project (which is neither RB nor open-source!). Andy presents a good starting point:
> The ultimate product in calculation and unit conversion is Frink > (Java based non-open-source) >... > and vastly more important and trivial conversions > > eg; if you were going to the Sun in a spaceship that travelled at one > lightyear/hour how long would it take? > > 93 million miles / (1 lightyear / s) -> milliseconds > > 56.952089773784459871 This is an incomplete result, in my opinion, because it doesn't include the units -- granted, they're implied by the input, but that doesn't help if you want to use the output in a subsequent calculation. In CalcPad, this would be: unit lightyear = 9460528404879 km unit msec = 0.001 sec 93*10^6 mile / (1 lightyear/hr) in msec: 56.953306 msec (You type only what's before the colon; the colon and result is added by CalcPad.) Note that this is copied straight from CalcPad; you must have retyped your example, since you say lightyear/s but the result is only right if you actually used lightyear/hr. Anyway, suppose you now wanted to see how much energy this trip to the sun would take, if your ship's power plant burns 1.21 GW: # * 1.21 GW: 68913500.520306 J "#" is a special symbol which means "the result on the last line." The calculation here works only because all results include the units. This is true also when you assign variables: use km, sec, kJ, GW -- define what units we like to see: shipSpeed = 1 lightyear/hr: 2627924556.910833 km / sec tripDist = 93*10^6 mile: 149668992 km tripTime = tripDist / shipSpeed: 0.056953 sec shipPower = 1.21 GW: 1.21 GW tripEnergy = tripTime * shipPower: 68913.50052 kJ You can define and use functions, too, like this: -- assume that each J of power costs us 1 cent tripCost(dist) = dist / shipSpeed * shipPower * (0.01 $/J) -- trip to the sun costs... tripCost( 93*10^6 mile ): 689135.005203 $ -- trip to Alpha Centauri costs... tripCost( 4 lightyear ): 174240000000 $ Finally, to get our ship speed in furlongs per fortnight, we have to define those units -- out of the box, CalcPad has just the common units. Perhaps some beta tester would like to request other ones? But no matter, it's easy to do: furlong = 201.168 m fortnight = 14 day shipSpeed in furlong, fortnight: 15801407500394416 furlong / fortnight So there are some examples. CalcPad not a primarily unit converter, but a full-fledged worksheet-style calculator that happens to work with fully defined quantities. (My wife uses CalcPad extensively, and doesn't ever use units at all -- she's a computer scientist!) Does this inspire anyone to actually try my open-source REALbasic app, and give me some feedback? :) <http://www.codenautics.com/calcpad> Thanks, - Joe -- Joe Strout -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] Verified Express, LLC "Making the Internet a Better Place" http://www.verex.com/ _______________________________________________ Unsubscribe or switch delivery mode: <http://www.realsoftware.com/support/listmanager/> Search the archives of this list here: <http://support.realsoftware.com/listarchives/lists.html>
