[HN Gopher] Notepad Calculator
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       Notepad Calculator
        
       Author : archagon
       Score  : 147 points
       Date   : 2022-12-27 21:13 UTC (1 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (notepadcalculator.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (notepadcalculator.com)
        
       | simlevesque wrote:
       | This should have it's own file extension.
        
       | 97-109-107 wrote:
       | For linux users there's a approximation of this idea -
       | speedcrunch
        
         | greenyoda wrote:
         | Great little program! And it's also available for Windows and
         | macOS.
         | 
         | https://heldercorreia.bitbucket.io/speedcrunch
        
       | amadeuspagel wrote:
       | I made a notepad repl: https://replpad.com/
        
         | unnouinceput wrote:
         | Uh, dark mode. Look, if you're going to overwrite the user's
         | browser settings I suggest give, if not full theme choice, at
         | the very least to chose from dark/white mode. I'm a light mode
         | user, so your web app lived on my computer for less than 5
         | seconds.
        
       | steveridout wrote:
       | I'm the creator of this site. It's a very nice surprise to see it
       | appear here!
       | 
       | I created it a few years ago and recently added the ability to
       | create multiple notes and to sync your notes to the server.
       | 
       | Interested to hear your feedback, please keep it coming!
       | 
       | EDIT:
       | 
       | Just adding that there are two secret features that you can
       | enable via the browser's JavaScript console:
       | 
       | 1. Change locale to change the number format used in the answer
       | column:                 localStorage['locale'] = 'en-US'
       | 
       | 2. Dark mode:                 localStorage['darkMode'] = 'true'
       | 
       | After running either of the above commands, refresh the tab for
       | the change to take effect.
        
         | ForOldHack wrote:
         | Its actually brilliant, literally brilliant.
        
       | riedel wrote:
       | Also working nicely both numeric and symbolic: https://smath.com
       | (3MB windows binary or cloud version, russian freemium)
        
       | warning26 wrote:
       | Neat! I remember a Mac app with a similar concept from ages ago:
       | 
       | http://calca.io/
       | 
       | Glad to see something like it for the web!
        
         | monkmartinez wrote:
         | I love this app on my iPhone. It seems like it has been
         | abandoned and that is super sad. It comes in super handy when
         | traveling and you need to convert currency and for purchases.
        
         | toiletfuneral wrote:
         | [dead]
        
       | _0xdd wrote:
       | Reminds me of Soulver[0], one of my favorite macOS apps.
       | 
       | [0] https://soulver.app/
        
         | steveridout wrote:
         | That was the inspiration for this site a few years back. I
         | wasn't a Mac user at the time so couldn't even try Soulver
         | myself but thought it was a cool idea.
        
         | fprotthetarball wrote:
         | Soulver's WolframAlpha support is great, too. No need to switch
         | to a browser to bring in some real world data.
        
           | sidechaining wrote:
           | How do you do this?
        
             | fprotthetarball wrote:
             | Settings > Calculator > Wolfram|Alpha. You provide a
             | Wolfram ID from WolframAlpha and then "= ?" in a sheet will
             | query WolframAlpha for the previous variable.
             | 
             | https://twitter.com/soulver/status/1592207142047698945
        
       | dang wrote:
       | Related:
       | 
       |  _Show HN: Notepad Calculator - create and share back of the
       | envelope calculations_ -
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10670343 - Dec 2015 (2
       | comments)
        
       | samwillis wrote:
       | Love all of these, here's another one from earlier this year:
       | https://numpad.io/
       | 
       | Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32493946
        
       | linhns wrote:
       | Great! Best UI I have seen among similar apps. Works on phone as
       | well.
        
       | albybisy wrote:
       | another nice app for mac is Numi. https://numi.app/
        
       | dogancelik wrote:
       | Neat! I used to use https://instacalc.com/ for simple
       | calculations, you can share your calculations, but it doesn't
       | have the notepad feature like this one.
        
       | ForOldHack wrote:
       | Its already cratered... but its written well enough to have been
       | archived, and it still runs!
       | 
       | https://web.archive.org/web/20221228162145/https://notepadca...
        
       | khugo wrote:
       | I've seen these a couple of times now and they do look pretty
       | cool. Does anyone know if there is an Obsidian plugin that does
       | something similar to this?
        
         | seanosaur wrote:
         | Numerals maybe?
         | 
         | https://github.com/gtg922r/obsidian-numerals
        
           | khugo wrote:
           | Looks great, thanks!
        
       | Daunk wrote:
       | Make it a VSCode extension. (There's probably one already)
        
         | jdmichal wrote:
         | If you're in VSCode already, just install the Microsoft
         | "Polyglot Notebooks" extension and get full Markdown with a
         | multi-language .NET runtime.
         | 
         | https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=ms-dotne...
        
         | infinityio wrote:
         | QALC is a vscode extension that behaves quite similarly to
         | this!
        
       | PreInternet01 wrote:
       | Calculations fail if your browser locale uses number formats
       | incompatible with en-US.
       | 
       | E.g. the "How many weekdays in a month?" (near the top of the
       | page) calculation remains blank for me.
       | 
       | Changing the input from "*5" to "4.333333 * 5" makes it work --
       | the outcome of the previous step is "4,333333" (comma, not dot),
       | breaking the next step...
        
         | steveridout wrote:
         | Thanks for reporting this, I'll work on it.
         | 
         | In the meantime, there's a workaround you can use to change the
         | locale by entering the following in the JavaScript console:
         | localStorage['locale'] = 'en-US'
        
         | flobosg wrote:
         | _ans * 5_ also works.
        
         | nodja wrote:
         | The pokemon bd/sp games suffer from a similar issue.
         | 
         | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fB2C8q42X64
        
       | anotheryou wrote:
       | oh cool, have to compare it to
       | https://bbodi.github.io/notecalc3/notecalc# (once not on mobile)
        
       | bityard wrote:
       | I've always found these apps interesting, I feel like if
       | Microsoft added one of these to their office suite, it would
       | replace a lot of use cases that people otherwise abuse
       | spreadsheets for.
       | 
       | I'd love to find a self-hosted version of one of these but at the
       | same time wonder if I'd just end up reaching for a jupyter
       | notebook instead.
        
         | montagg wrote:
         | I've used Soulver on the mac to replace a spreadsheet for
         | personal finances and it is amazing. Does a lot of what this
         | does but with better natural language integration and a whole
         | ton of useful functions like compound interest/loan
         | calculations, stock prices, currency conversion, hex math, etc
        
           | deepfriedbits wrote:
           | Love Soulver. It's such a well-made app. My problem is that I
           | use it so infrequently that I often forget I have it.
        
         | archagon wrote:
         | Calca is what I use for this, and I think it has a Windows
         | version. Excellent app, though in maintenance mode as far as I
         | can tell.
        
         | analog31 wrote:
         | Microsoft is so close -- after all the office suite already has
         | a built in macro language. I tolerated that language because it
         | was part of my "thinking" app -- Excel -- for so many years. As
         | a non-expert in programming languages, I couldn't fault it in
         | any way, except for being proprietary.
         | 
         | Today, I've gotten to the point where I can barely use any
         | document editing app that doesn't let me insert a code cell,
         | which means for all intents and purposes, Jupyter. Every other
         | authoring tool requires me to copy and paste -- from Jupyter.
        
         | monkmartinez wrote:
         | Integration with OneNote would be a killer feature. I do a lot
         | of price comparisons and abuse spreadsheets all the time. I
         | have to convert many unit types to ensure apples to apples
         | comparisons which are difficult to keep in your head. So I end
         | up with mangled spreadsheets with tons of text and numbers.
         | Obviously, not the intended use case for spreadsheets.
        
       | kkfx wrote:
       | I do something equivalent (with far more features) in-Emacs
       | buffers with calc functions on a region, perhaps inside an org-
       | mode note.
       | 
       | I do cite that NOT as a critic for the author NOR as
       | advertisement for Emacs but to state a thing: FULLY INTEGRATED
       | ENVIRONMENTS are the way to go. It's absurd that with an OS/set
       | of apps who can do something you can't do something out-of-
       | context. I'm actually write and email? Why I can't solve some
       | math inside of the mail body?
       | 
       | The sole answer I found is commercial software: keeping things
       | separated means having products on sale. Keep anything integrated
       | means far less.
        
         | JZL003 wrote:
         | Speaking of literate-calc mode is _AMAZING_ for these sorts of
         | things. It lets you use emacs-calc in a notebook, so you get
         | units, unit conversions, solving. It 's great for quick
         | calculations and units make sure you know immediately if you
         | need to divide or multiply.
         | 
         | I use it all the time to make benchmarks for how long something
         | will take, the memory, etc
         | 
         | (Just add this for unit conversions
         | 
         | ``` (after! calc (defalias 'calcFunc-uconv 'math-convert-
         | units)) ``` )
        
       | wodenokoto wrote:
       | The concept for this is awesome. I do wish I could get it as a
       | plug-in to vs code in a similar fashion to how vs code handles
       | jupyter notebooks
        
       | perryizgr8 wrote:
       | Looks awesome. Let me plug my own, way more basic version:
       | 
       | https://blog.perryizgr8.com/typecalc/
       | 
       | Sadly I never took it as far as I wanted to.
        
       | jonwinstanley wrote:
       | This is cool. I use a Mac app called Numi that does something
       | similar.
        
       | jaredreich wrote:
       | Nice! Very similar to https://calcutext.com/
        
       | jonahx wrote:
       | I think it's interesting that the value here is essentially "a
       | jupyter notebook" but...
       | 
       | - Evaluations shown in a sidebar
       | 
       | - Automatically figures out what is a calculation and what is a
       | comment/explanation for you
       | 
       | I am not saying this to minimize the app, but to marvel at how
       | much just those things improve the UX, at least for many use
       | cases.
        
         | anderskaseorg wrote:
         | Perhaps the most important difference is that expressions re-
         | evaluate automatically on changes. You don't have to go
         | manually rerun all the dependent expressions, or wait for the
         | kernel to restart, or worry that some of the results you're
         | seeing might be stale.
        
       | lindig wrote:
       | Suggestion: parse any number like 12:03 as 12 minutes and 3
       | seconds (and 04:12:03 with hours) and represent it as seconds. It
       | makes working with durations a lot easier. This is just an
       | additional parsing rule (could also use 12m3 or 4h12m3) like 1e3
       | for 1*10^3 but is typically not implemented.
        
       | smusamashah wrote:
       | There are a bunch of these shared here over time.
       | 
       | https://bbodi.github.io/notecalc3/notecalc
       | 
       | https://dedo.io/
       | 
       | https://numbr.dev/
       | 
       | https://github.com/iaredreich/calcutext
       | 
       | https://calcutext.com/
       | 
       | https://calca.io/
        
         | xixixao wrote:
         | I have a non-exhaustive comparison table of different
         | alternatives here:
         | 
         | https://github.com/xixixao/recomputer#same-use-case
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | spicybright wrote:
         | For another one, I use Numi for macos often. It's native, clean
         | looking, can handle units, and maintains it's buffer between
         | launches.
         | 
         | I love it as a virtual back of an envelope to noodle math on.
         | 
         | https://numi.app/
        
         | werd1 wrote:
         | Andrea Juhasz
        
       | david927 wrote:
       | Notepad++ has NppCalc which has similar functionality. Nice work!
        
       | chazeon wrote:
       | Look good. I start to wonder what if Jupyter Notebook has results
       | shown on the right.
        
       | garganzol wrote:
       | This concept has big potential. It is similar to a spreadsheet
       | but allows the free form of data entry which may be empowering to
       | quite a few customers out there.
        
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       (page generated 2022-12-28 23:00 UTC)