Tab for constant values in scientific calculator

microsoft / calculator

Windows Calculator: A simple yet powerful calculator that ships with Windows

MIT License

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Tab for constant values in scientific calculator #123

Open ghost opened 5 years ago

ghost commented 5 years ago

Problem Statement Time consuming to solve mathematical/scientific calculations while being limited to numbers only.

Proposal Add a constant tab where users could import constant values for their mathematical/scientific calculations.

Goal

Button for each constant with the name of the constant in bold and the value beneath the constants name in normal text.
A search bar for faster navigation than using only the scroll bar.

HowardWolosky commented 5 years ago

Thanks for the feature suggestion. This does sound like an interesting idea. We have a process in place for feature suggestions that impact the end-user experience, which includes a template that helps frame the feature pitch. Please update using that template.

MicrosoftIssueBot commented 5 years ago

This is your friendly Microsoft Issue Bot. I've seen this issue come in and have gone to tell a human about it.

ghost commented 5 years ago

Thanks for the feature suggestion. This does sound like an interesting idea. We have a process in place for feature suggestions that impact the end-user experience, which includes a template that helps frame the feature pitch. Please update using that template.

Thank you for taking your time and reviewing this request! I edited and used three parts of the template you asked me to use. I'll try to update it tomorrow morning if still required.

joshbw commented 5 years ago

I don't know if the original request was specific to mathematical constants or was referring to scientific constants in various disciplines (Avogadro constant, Gravitational Constant, etc.), but a tab in the expanded view that now includes history and memory that allowed the various scientific constants to be inserted (and even better, allow assigning keyboard shortcuts) would be amazing

ghost commented 5 years ago

I don't know if the original request was specific to mathematical constants or was referring to scientific constants in various disciplines (Avogadro constant, Gravitational Constant, etc.), but a tab in the expanded view that now includes history and memory that allowed the various scientific constants to be inserted (and even better, allow assigning keyboard shortcuts) would be amazing

I seem to have removed that information by accident. Edited the request and I hope that it's more clear now.

dodexahedron commented 5 years ago

Having the option to display them as the numerical or symbolic value in history would be a nice addition to this idea, I think.

lewisje commented 5 years ago

It would be neat to see the Euler–Mascheroni constant or Apéry's constant or Catalan's constant in the set of pre-configured mathematical constants, but unlike e and π, they're not used in science as far as I know, just mathematics.

grochocki commented 5 years ago

We reviewed the pitch and would love to move forward with it! I think this pitch is a great start, but there are still some open questions. Moving this into planning to iron out some of the details.

This aligns really well with the keyboard improvements we are making (#428). A couple questions to figure out:

How do we decide which constants we support?
Do all modes support constants (i.e., Scientific, Programmer, etc.)? Does the list of constants change accross modes?
How do we ensure we present all of the constants in a scalable way?

I created calculator-specs/constants to track progress. For more information on next steps, check out our spec workflow.