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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?
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.
This male dominated industry never ceases to amaze me with their constant "pull requests".
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.
Haha, exactly my problem. As a programmer, I stopped using it when they only allowed integers in "programmer" mode. How can they be so retarded?
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
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.
> make the programmer version allow floating point numbers?
Agreed. In the mean-time here are 3 different solutions (shamelessly stolen from this thread) to show a floating-point in hex:
1. Use Windows Calc
2. Use Javascript
3. Use Unix bc
1. Using Windows Calculator press the following hotkeys: (Note: This worked in Windows 7, I'm not sure if it still works in Windows 10. Who knows if MS fucked up the hotkeys...)
a) Integer portion:
Alt-2 (enter number) Ctrl-L Ctrl-P Ctrl-R - Ctrl-R ; Ctrl-C Alt-3 F6 Ctrl-V F5
Explanation of what those cryptic hotkeys do:
... enter number or do calculations ...
Alt-2 (switch to Scientific mode)
Ctrl-L (equivalent to MC button)
Ctrl-P (equivalent to M+ button)
Ctrl-R (equivalent to MR button)
-
Ctrl-R
; (equivalent to Int button)
Ctrl-C
Alt-3 (switch to Programmer mode)
F6 (equivalent to DEC button)
Ctrl-V
F5 (equivalent to hex button
b) Fractional portion:
Alt-2 Ctrl-R - Ctrl-R ; = * 2 y 32 = ; Ctrl-C Alt-3 F6 Ctrl-V F5
Exampe: 123.456 will show two outputs: 7B, and 74BC 6A7E
2. Use Javascript. Open up any browser and start the developer console (Windows Chrome press Ctrl-Shift-I)
var n = 123.456;
console.log( n.toString(16) );
Will display: 7b.74bc6a7ef9dc
3. Use the Un*x arbitrary precision calculator: bc -l.
bc -l
obase=16; scale=40;
123.456 / 1.0
7B.74BC6A7EF9DB22D0E5604189374BC6A7EF
Notes
a) make sure you load the math library with -L.
b) You have to use the stupid divide by 1.0 trick to force the full output because bc only defaults to the precision of the input numbers.
Sad that MS can't even implement a basic programmer calculator after all these years. LOL.
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.
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?
Even calculator is spying.
Yeah bc is wonky; it has a bug / feature where it only uses the precision of the input. Dividing by 1.0 forces full precision. These seem to be the general heuristics:
Addition: precision = min( lhs, rhs )
Multiplication: precision = lhs + rhs - 1, but doesn't seem consistent
Division: precision specified by scale
Given this input ...
bc -l
obase=16;scale=40;
0.456 + 0.
0.456 + 0.0
0.456 + 0.00
0.456 + 0.000
0.456 + 0.0000
0.456 + 0.00000
0.456 + 0.000000
0.456 * 1.
0.456 * 1.0
0.456 * 1.00
0.456 * 1.000
0.456 * 1.0000
0.456 * 1.00000
0.456 * 1.000000
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Slashdot: Too fucking lazy to fixing their shitty LAMENESS filter so people can't actually post SHORT code snippets.