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Microsoft Open-Sources Windows Calculator (betanews.com)
Microsoft said today it has made the source code for its Windows calculator available on GitHub. The company said it hopes to work with contributors to improve the user experience of Windows calculator. In a statement, Dave Grochocki and Howard Wolosky of Microsoft said: Today, we're excited to announce that we are open sourcing Windows Calculator on GitHub under the MIT License. This includes the source code, build system, unit tests, and product roadmap. Our goal is to build an even better user experience in partnership with the community. We are encouraging your fresh perspectives and increased participation to help define the future of Calculator. As developers, if you would like to know how different parts of the Calculator app work, easily integrate Calculator logic or UI into your own applications, or contribute directly to something that ships in Windows, now you can. Calculator will continue to go through all usual testing, compliance, security, quality processes, and Insider flighting, just as we do for our other applications.
I hope this program gets ported to Linux now that it's open source.
Sure. This isn't 100% PR.
If there was ever any piece of software that is done and needs no more work, it was this one.
We've been waiting years for this!
There are plenty of open-source calculators from HP-11C style RPN
apps for Android and IOS, to a variety of callable interface ones on
Linux, MacOS, and whatever.
Microsoft's 24 year old calculator isn't worth the code it was stolen on.
E
What's next, Minesweeper?
Can someone now put the 1/x button back where it is easily accessible and make the programmer version allow floating point numbers? I get really annoyed when I'm dealing with hex values that are whole numbers, where 1 represents 2^(-8), and I can get the integer value from the hex, but then have to copy the value to the scientific calculator to convert to the floating point value...
https://github.com/Microsoft/c...
There is no XUL, only WebExtensions...
I will forever remember where I was and what I was doing when I learned about such momentous, earth-shattering news.
microsoft: we are committed to open source, here is some software we released as "opened source"
internet: yeah this license isnt really open source
microsoft: We have heard the feedback and are continuing our awesome open source initiative.
internet: its cool. since you spent 40 years trying to force people to use your crappy software, we came up with other open source tools that all either do the same thing, or do it much better than yours.
microsoft: Here is calculator. It is a small but advanced tool you can use
internet: Linux has about 34 different calculators already. and they run in windows too.
microsoft: Yes yes, you are welcome. finally, A calculator that is open source. now if youll excuse me, ive only got 2 plays left on my zune copy of mmm-bop and id like to enjoy them.
Good people go to bed earlier.
We had the old file manager, early DOS versions and now the calculator. Eventually Microsoft will probably go the Red Hat route and Make the full switch to open source. They already kind of are with Edge soon being based on Chromium.
The old blue-ish type could use decimals and switch to hex in a single interface, without losing the numbers. I don't understand why they had to separate it into multiple modes. Very annoying.
While I agree with the general consensus that releasing the source to calculator is underwhelming, I'm wondering if there is more to the plan here.
Maybe Microsoft has a long term goal of making more apps open-source, to help with the support workload or to develop more Microsoft developers and maybe find some UI designers with fresh approaches.
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
Microsoft is dead.
This means I'll be able to get a version that doesn't beg me to rate it on the windows store
Solitaire was probably the most use bundled application of Windows until they ladened it with microtractions.
For a moment there we almost had a revelation on what really goes on in Redmond
What makes it so slow?
The same plan as when their game division say "they will start again supporting pc gaming". Lip service, but in reality do nothing of worth. With the calculator it is so comical as to give me tears of laugh. There are so many OS project which do better with more functionality, and heck there isn't anything in windows calculator a 1st year student could not slap in a week in java.
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I'm hoping it will soon get an RPN mode.
I can't wait so they can teach us Mickey$oft math!
;^)
Linux kcalc app:
3 + 3 * 3 == 12
Linux command line app bc:
3 + 3 * 3 == 12
Linux C Program using C Standard operator precedence:
int main(void)
{
printf("3 + 3 * 3 == %d\n", 3 + 3 * 3);
return 0;
}
Output:
3 + 3 * 3 == 12
Windows 10 Calculator:
3 + 3 * 3 == 18!
Priceless!!!
Dear Microsoft,
good thing you did not wait 26 more days to make this announcement.
#DeleteFacebook
Can't wait for a snazzy new calculator to come out... ! Come on MS, pretty much every programming course teaches you to make a calculator within the first few weeks!
If they are serious about building out its functionality, it would be nice if it had added graphing and calculus features added to it to mimic a TI-83 or TI-89. This could be a benefit to students who have to share calculators in school and can't afford one for home use (or those times you just don't have one on you). Having it shipped and supported right inside Windows would be a great benefit for students.
It's a little less work for the folks at ReactOS.
In Windows 7, Start > Run > Calc and calculator loads instantly and you can start using it. That's when the calculator appeared to be written using Windows Forms. When they switched to Modern UI or WPF in Windows 10, when you open it, Start > Run > Calc. wait...wait...wait... and then it's open. Nearly every application that they switched from 7 to 10 in this way has a loading lag that wasn't there before.
Even The Verge had a more prominent link, at the beginning of its second paragraph. Not simply the word "here".
There is no XUL, only WebExtensions...
Jesus fucking Christ! Why the hell does one need to have an "improved" experience when using a calculator? It is just about the simplest piece of software one uses. The only thing it needs to do is perform mathematical calculations.
Does everything need to be an "experience"? How about just working?
Most of Bill Gates wealth is built on luck timing and greed. The EU should have forced MS to fully document their file format.
46137
I'm so excited about this! Microsoft Windows Calculator is hands down one of the most important applications I use on a daily basis. This is vitally important to me! --said no one ever. WTF?
The link is the very last word of the article, "here". https://github.com/Microsoft/c...
There is no XUL, only WebExtensions...
Even calculator is spying.
A student will still need to buy an authentic TI-83/84 or TI-89 calculator for standardized testing because the College Board's SAT rules ban QWERTY keyboards and touch screens.
How will that affect my formula of Pi R Round !Square?
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It has access to the Windows clipboard. Is there any way that can be exploited? Just curious.
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Terry Gilliam did some insider flighing in The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988)—mainly Robin Williams's head flying around on a Roman dinner plate (about as useful as the source code to Windows calculator).
Robin's expression is slightly on the mirthful side in this one, even by his own standards. Anything to do with Uma Thurman's brief nude scene, in her filmic debut?
Google's calculator, with it's magic unit conversions, is a different beast, whose source code would have some actual value.
I'm curious whether any improvements made to the open source code would be back-ported into Windows?
I often use the date calculation feature in calc.exe. Sometimes I inadvertently click on the "Calculate" button instead of "=" when doing an arithmetic calculation, however, and once clicked, I can't go back to using the numeric functions without closing and reopening the program.
I'd love it if Microsoft Open Source Caligari TrueSpace. It's about the only product they own I want. Hasn't been supported since 2008, would be lovely to have the code.
Like most apps on Linux for the user side compared to closed source apps, all the "calculators" being claimed here are bound to be a mismatch of probably OK code and dev laziness/chaos in user interfaces. I've been at this game for over twenty years now. I've spent years working on Linux and Windows. Long enough to see open source promises by the "crowd" come an go. It appears this crowd can only see this as some kind of joke. It's not a joke. MS is making Windows and the WLS file compatible with the next update. They're doing things. What are you all doing? Looks like you are sitting around with your 2% user market share - that never changes, and complaining. Sure, open source has a lot more calculators, and - almost no one cares.
Related info here...
The Win10 calculator has an awful UI. It's huge -- much bigger than it needs to be. As others here have noted, it also starts slowly, since it's a Windows Store app and not a normal Win32 program. As others here have also noted, it may not work at all if your network's firewall blocks Windows Store access. (Or you remove the Windows Store from Windows.)
So, replace the darn thing. There are lots of other Windows calculator programs out there. (My favorite is Moffset FreeCalc: http://www.moffsoft.com/freeca.... It may not be visually the most beautiful either, but it doesn't take up tons of screen real estate, it's fast, and it does everything I need. And it's free.)
And if you want, you can do some registry hacks so any attempts to run calc.exe instead run Moffset FreeCalc, or whatever is your calculator of choice.
My batch here is also easily adjustable to open a different calculator (e.g. Calculator Plus, or whatever), just change the folder\file referenced.
(You could also use this same technique to replace notepad.exe with Notepad++ or whatever other various replacements from stock Windows apps that you might want. Note, however, that Windows may likely reset your settings anytime there's a major build update, e.g., one of Microsoft's big every-six-months build updates.)
Batch file posted here in Pastebin:
https://pastebin.com/a8na7k4d
As I read the statement, I literally saw a scene in my mind of an empty space with tumbleweed blowing by.
The Windows calculator is only an algebraic one. It does not handle RPN notation, In my younger days, I wrote a program in 8bit rombasic that emulated something like a HP15, but you could set the operation in 'base by', eg "base 73 by 10's". You could set your own degrees and logs as well, independently of the base (eg 28 sto T would set the circle to 28 degrees.)
The calculator on the desktop is not really all that useful, unless you can edit the calculation history. For plain dos and Windows, i used to use a thing called 'acalc' from PC-DOS 7, but i wrote a rather cute calculator in REXX, which does much of the same thing. (It supports trig functions in circles too).
Of course, we see reactos has a nice calculator that looks pretty much like the windows one. They had the thing set up so you could run the winxp type version under w2000. Microsoft forced you through a large DLL for this activity. Nothing like what you need to run the norton desktop for windows one though. It uses quite a large slab of the application.
OS/2 - because choice is a terrible thing to waste.
Why is this even on slashdot? Its a pathetic News if not News at all. I just released a more interesting repo with an empty README under GPL.
Something completely new in the open source software scenario!
Thank you Microsoft!
Sent as ripples into the electromagnetic field. No single photon has been harmed in the process.
function multiply(a,b){
for (i=0; i b; i++) {
a += a;
}
return a;
}
> The only thing missing from SpeedCrunch is hex to decimal and decimal to hex conversions.
Maybe I'm missing something but could you clarify what you mean because I'm not seeing that?
hex(123.456)
0x7B.74BC6A7EF9DB22D0E56
dec(0x7B.74BC)
123.45599365234375
(press F2 for decimal then enter in)
123.456
(press F8 for hex and it will now show as)
0x7B.74BC6A7EF9DB22D0E56