Re: galculator should be included in Gnome

[Simon Floery <simon floery gmx at>]

> Some sort of standard form is very useful, though. Splatting the whole
> number onto a display is just unwieldy.
> 
> How precise is libm? How precise is galculator internally? (Basically,
> how many sig figs are accurate before weird rounding errors can start to
> happen?)

galculator uses double precision throughout its code. double precision means
an accuracy of 2.22e-16 (15 digits of precision). Naturally, the number of
significant figures may decrease slightly during an extensive calculation due
to rounding errors. 

> I'd say this is a very good reason for going with galculator, though it
> conflicts with Anand Kumria's e-mail. It seems that galculator does know
> about precedence, but still doesn't work to the "Typing something in as
> it's written" principle. You have to do things like "1 + 10 log" to get
> what should really be "1 + log 10". Easy-fix?
> 

galculator pays respect to arithmetic precedence. This means it knows the rule
"braces before multiplication/division before addition/subtraction". Allowing
"1 + log 10" doesn't make sense with a "number only" display for usability
reasons. Therefore such calculators apply functions to the current
display value.

For "Typing something in as it's written" another display type is required,
e.g. one that also displays operations and functions and not only numbers.

regards
-simon