![]() It hasn’t slavishly copied the multi-labeled buttons of a physical calculator because it can change its button labels-and indeed, its entire button layout-as needed. PCalc looks like a physical calculator only in those parts where physical calculators have proved to be efficient: single keystrokes for what are often complex functions, for example. Skeuomorphic has become a dirty word recently, and you might think PCalc could be criticized for trying too hard to look and act like a physical calculator. It’s governed by the Clear Memories on AC setting. (Swipe right-to-left if you Undo too far and need to Redo.)Īs I said in this post, being able to tap the AC button without clearing the memories has been a great addition. Clearing of almost any type can be done easily enough with one of the red keys, and Undoing is best done deliberately by swiping left-to-right in the display area. I often set the phone down while I’m working with PCalc, and I don’t want that or picking it back up to ruin a calculation I’m in the middle of. I have it set to Do Nothing because I’m paranoid about losing an interim calculation. The Shake Behavior can be set to Undo, Clear, or Do Nothing. I tried Show Edit Cursor for a while, but found the blinking underscore too distracting. I don’t like my calculator doing things without me explicitly telling it to, so all the On Open and On Close features are turned off. I have the horizontal layout set to Programming so I can get at those functions easily when I need to. Lastly, I thought I’d show my PCalc settings. I don’t know how hard a two-column list would be to implement, so I may be asking for too much, 2 but I don’t think two columns would be too crowded. The one-column list is a standard iOS widget, which I’m sure is why the developer, James Thomson, is using it. One improvement might be turning that one-column list of categories into a two-column list-there’d be less scrolling. PCalc can keep track of some 1 of your most recent conversions and put them in that section at the top, which is often quite handy, but not a panacea. It now takes more scrolling and searching to find the units you want. ![]() The growth in unit conversions has not been without cost. There are more units within each category, too, but I’m too lazy to do all those screenshots. In the real iPhone view, the number display will always be visible at the bottom of the screen, and scrolling will scroll only the list of unit categories.) (This is, of course, a composite image of the Conversions screen that I’ve stitched together from a few screenshots. ![]() Most of the other additions to PCalc since my last post on it have been additions and improvements to the unit conversion suite. Obviously, there are ways to enter fractions using the Frac key, but I don’t recommend it because it takes longer to activate the 2nd functions. And you don’t really have to use the 2nd key to do it.įor example, to enter \(3\frac\), you’d could press either. The calculations aren’t done as fractions-PCalc converts them immediately to decimal-but you can enter them that way. ![]() Starting with Version 2.4, PCalc has allowed you to enter fractions and mixed numbers directly. Notice that the decimal point key changes to Frac when 2nd is active. Of course, if you use algebraic mode you can’t be my friend.Ī new key has appeared since my last PCalc post. Here’s the keyboard in its normal state:ĭid I forget to tell you that I have PCalc set to RPN mode? If you use algebraic mode, the stack manipulation keys, Swap and Roll, won’t be there and parenthesis keys will. Like many scientific calculators, PCalc has a 2nd key that changes the function of many of the I almost always use PCalc in the vertical orientation, and I use the Engineering layout with the Twilight theme. To see everything I’ve written about PCalc since I bought it in 2008, see this list of posts. I don’t happen to be in that class-no iPad, no hardware keyboard-but because it’s been a year since my last PCalc post and there’ve been a few releases in the interim, I figured this’d be a good time to talk about it again. The new feature is support for hardware keyboards, which I’m sure is a big improvement for a certain class of user. ![]() A new version of PCalc hit the App Store today. ![]()
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