New version to include the latest issues and feature requests.

[Proektsoftbg]

Hi friends,

There are quite a lot issues and requests piled up, so I am building a special version for the community to include some of them (not all, but what I can for now).

I do not remember who requested this, but it was something like making difference between "g" as gravity acceleration and "g" as mass. Another similar one was "m" as variable (mass) and "m" as meters. I am going to make it like that:

If you put a dot before the name, you will make it always a unit, say ".g", ".m", even if a variable with the same name exists. If you do not put a dot, it will work like before - if a variable exists, it will become the variable, otherwise: the unit. Below is an example. What do you think?

It will also help for the "%" units to differ from the "%" operator. If you write "10.%", it will be percent units. If you write "10%3", it will be operator. I will also add the "‰" units, which do not have this problem.

[Proektsoftbg]

Here is how "%" and "‰" units are going to work:)

[jgagnonNT]

I'm a bit late in the subject but it seems the "%" (percent) is very commonly used in engineering.
I have never encountered a calculation using the "modulo" operation. Might be more used in programming.
It seems it would be less confusing (expectially to new users) to assign "%" only for "percent" and to have a built-in function called "mod()" for modulo.

The implementation of .g and .m makes sense. The implementation of .% seems to be more confusing.

[Proektsoftbg]

Yes, you are right in general. If we were starting now from scratch, we would probably do it like that. But for a system that exists for years, it is not good to make such revolutionary changes, because old worksheets will stop working. If we do that, we will probably have to make it step by step by introducing the mod() function first and drop the % operator after some time and a lot of announcements.

On the other hand, % is used as a modulo operator in a lot of popular programming languages, like C, C++, VB, etc. When we started Calcpad years ago, it did not have any units yet, so it was natural to use % as operator like the other language.

I think that at this time, introducing the dot before units to remove ambiguity with duplicate variables and operators is an elegant way to get out of this situation. It also opens another possibility to define custom units in the future like:
.knot = nmi/h and use it instead of the expression on the right, just like other units. It will be different than having a variable knot = nmi/h.

[Proektsoftbg]

I found that both the "Insert" menu and the help on the right side insert "%" as unit instead of ".%". I fixed this and you can- download and reinstall it. Also, I noticed that .% works only with integer numbers, say 2.%. If you have 2.5.% it returns a parse error because of the two dots. So, in these cases, we have to use 2.5*.% to work. So, we definitely have to consider replacing the % operator with the mod() function in the future and making it to be units only.

[Proektsoftbg]

Hi, this is how if and switch functions form issue #96 will look:

[xyont]

Many thanks, is it possible to be the core programs running on Linux?

[Proektsoftbg]

@xyont It would be great to have a Linux version!

I think it is possible already. After I got rid of System.Drawing, which is GDI+ dependent and replaced with SkiaSharp, there is nothing that holds the core to windows only. Even the console version Calcpad.Cli can be also compiled:

https://github.com/Proektsoftbg/Calcpad/tree/main/Calcpad.Cli

Unfortunately, I am not a Linux user myself and do not have much experience with it. If you have Linux on your side, you can try to clone the repository and compile. If you manage, please give us feedback. What I can do is to help is something is not working and need to be changed in code. Also, can do some testing. I can run it on a free cloud Linux virtual machine if needed.

Please, only wait unit I fix the Greek letters in the console. Although it may be Windows specific problem.

[xyont]

I'm an ordinary user, lack of experienced in compiling, but I'll try someday. Currently working on Windows also, only guessing the possibility in CalcPad for Linux.

It may be okay about the limitation when Greek letters in the console represent by standard typeset (e.g. pi, beta, alpha, etc.) but rendered properly in HTML

[Proektsoftbg]

OK! No problem, thank you anyway! :) I hope we will find someone to contribute on that.
I prefer to focus on the next math features like vectors, matrices, systems on equations, etc. We can make effective parallel implementation of sparce matrices. It will be helpful later to program some FEA solutions with Calcpad. But still a lot of work have to be done.

[xyont]

Great to hear in development of matrices, this leap to spreadsheet were known to be slower at. More powerful, a continuous beam and 2D frame/truss can be created.

[Proektsoftbg]

It is done! :)

You can download and try the new version from:
https://github.com/Proektsoftbg/Calcpad/releases/tag/v5.9.7

It is recommended to uninstall the old version before installing the new one.

Enjoy!

[Ystar0211]

There is a problem. In the new version, double-clicking the code line, can‘t be aligned with the output line。

[Proektsoftbg]

Yes, you are right. Thank you!

Now I fixed this and amended the last release. You can download and install again, but please, uninstall the previous one first.
Otherwise, it may not update all files.