Re: Potential new project: Calculator (scientific, graphing, statistical)

[Hilaire Fernandes <hilaire.fernandes@iname.com>]

The recent thread about scientific calcularor look to me very
interesting as I always think that Dr Geo needs a programmable one.
You asked about what kind of interaction with other applications
I can give you one exemple of interaction with the geometry oriented
software I 've developed (now porting to GTK).
Until now Dr Geo is a very geometry oriented eduaction tools where
students can draw interactive figure and guessing properties of the
figure (with help of the dynamic aspect of the figure)
Some times ago I was thinking about integrating a programmable
calculator, from this calculator one student can import data from the
figure as segment length, coordinate, angle measure and many other
things; in the calculator those datas can then be used for calculus and
possibly reexported in the figure area and then used to design new
geometry object. Of course the calculator will need a programming
language. In the past I've try SLang interpreter and find it quite
efficient and very very easy to integrat in an application. You can
define an API from the application and exported it to the SLang
interpreter, next with SLang program yiu can use this API to what you
want (graphics, calculus)
A possible way of integration will be that one application can export it
API to your calculator (the API will be a set of function you can then
call from the calculator)

May be the Orbit stuff from Gnome could be very useful.
Sure it will add some complexity (i don't really know in fact) but the
basment of your application will be very great. We can compare Gnome and
KDE, KDE has grown very quicly but the Gnome staff had worked a lot in
the basment; for now KDE is really better (with more applications) but
in  some futur will KDE not suffer from a very fast growth ? And Gnome
show is reallpower ? (-- just guess, keep cool)

May be I will be please to help you in some part of your project
(-caause I need it for Dr Geo) but first I need to finish the GTK port
of DrGeo)


Yours


Hilaire


> Modularization via plug-ins is a popular thing to do these days...  And
> it has its uses.  I thought about it a bit, but my inital feeling is
> that it would add a significant amount of complexity to the program
> design, and for what gain?  As you mentioned, there are already a lot of
> good program-oriented math tools out there.  But for your phyics class
> and math lessons, are you really going to gain a lot from calculator
> plug-ins?  Perhaps I suffer from a limited imagination, but I don't see
> sufficient applications for it...





> 
> Otherwise, your ideas sound pretty much in-line with my own.
> 
>  - Kevin