Yoshiki, Yoshiki Ohshima wrote: > Reinier, > > Firstly, I apologize if my first email sounded too harsh to you. > (It definitely didn't mean to be personal.) > That's alright, I could have phrased it a little differently as well actually! I just think the two activities are suited for different things. Calculate is now more focussed on collaboration than the previous version, and the interface aims to resemble a calculator and expose the user to mathematics directly. Maybe I can include some extra educational features as well, like a help() command that explains things about functions. Pippy, for now, looks (to me) like a one-person activity, although I can imagine inclusion of a similar 'output-history' window to integrate the collaboration aspect.
On the other hand, I was thinking about allowing user-written functions in Calculate as well. I guess part of the success of the TI89 style calculators is that children can program stuff for it. In the end, Calculate functionality might overlap a little with Pippy. However, some overlap should not be a problem: for example, I designed Calculate so that it's easy to implement arbitrary precision math in the future. The end-user will never have to adjust to this underlying change, and can just continue to think about the relevant aspect of the activity: math. >> Being the main Calculate developer, I don't agree on your opinion about >> Calculate. I think it deserves to be a separate activity. It's true that >> it was a little underdeveloped lately, but that was mainly because I was >> on a (long) holiday. The last couple of days have produced major >> improvements in Calculate: tab-completion of variable names, copy-paste, >> journal support, etc. (not sure if it made it into the build yet, did a >> release though: http://rwh.corps.nl/Calculate-7.xo). More new features >> are coming, for example I just started working on a plot() function (an >> obviously useful extension), which I estimate to be functioning >> somewhere next week. >> > > It was not so much as Calculate is underdeveloped or not, I > think. (Almost every end-user software including Etoys is > underdeveloped). But looking at the similarity of Pippy and Calculate, > for example the plot feature you are making could be beneficial for > both, right? And, you would wish to have a calculator whose syntax is > closer to Python, right? > I'm not sure. I think the main goal is to have the syntax as close to (written) math as possible. >> There seem to be some performace issues with Calculate on the XO. I >> haven't been able to profile these yet, but I expect them to be related >> to the way the application is shared (basic sharing should be >> functioning). This problem has the highest priority now... >> > > Yes. I filed a bug report for it. The length of old expressions > seems to be strongly affecting the performance. > > >> The equation parser I wrote isn't perfect yet either, although in >> general it does a pretty good job at parsing simple as well as more >> complex expressions. Please file bug reports if you notice weird behavior... >> > > Yes. I did it, too. It must be something to do with an error within > parenthesis. > I saw that and fixed it, thanks :-) > -- Yoshiki > Cheers, Reinier _______________________________________________ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel