YaRPNcalc

Version 1.6 and HTC Touch HD support

2008-12-07T11:19:00.004+01:00

Version 1.6 adds a currency converter with support for over 30 currencies which are updated on a daily basis by The European Central Bank.

This release further adds support for 320x320 square screen devices (e.g. Palm Treo 800w) and contains some more minor changes.

Also available is now a special version of YaRPNcalc adding support for the HTC Touch HD. Besides offering a larger stack, this version also supports an additional button layout when in landscape mode.

Version 1.5.4

2007-12-21T23:15:00.000+01:00

Version 1.5.4 adds a last X register which preserves the number on the top of the stack before the last numeric operation. Pressing the Last X button will push a copy of that register onto the stack.

This release also fixes some crashes when using the date / time functions with very large (invalid) numbers.

Version 1.5.3

2007-10-05T22:44:00.001+02:00

Unfortunately, when fixing a freeze in Version 1.3.3 I only fixed that bug on the 1.3.x branch, but forgot to fix it on the trunk. So 1.5.3 fixes the same bug again: when switching to engineering mode with the number 0 on the stack, the calculator would freeze (enter a busy loop).
Additionally, 1.5.3 won't crash anymore when YaRPNcalc is started while in Landscape mode (on devices that support it).

Version 1.5.2

2007-05-31T22:39:00.000+02:00

Version 1.5.2 adds date and time functions and implements the user defined function layouts I mentioned in the last post.

YaRPNcalc can now convert to/from decimal time to HMS time (e.g. from 1.5 hours to 1 hour 30 minutes) as well as add/subtract HMS time. See here how to enter time as HMS.

With YaRPNcalc you can now calculate a future (or past) date by adding a number of days to a given date. You can also calculate the number of days between two given dates.

With user defined function layouts you can define your own function layouts, i.e. which function is on which button and on which of the three functions tabs. You can even put different functions on the four main function buttons (/, *, -, +). Here is a description of how to define your own function layout(s).

I've also added a new default function layout (called HMS) which swaps the main function buttons with the new HMS functions (convert to/from HMS and add/subtract HMS).

As usual the new release can be downloaded from here.

Version 1.5

2007-04-25T07:15:00.000+02:00

Version 1.5 supports different function layouts. Currently, YaRPNcalc offers two different function layouts, one with all the available functions and another which makes the most used functions available on the first function page. To change between function layouts, press the button labeled '1/2 All' (or '2/2 RLH') on the Functions screen.

I'm planning to add user defined function layouts configurable via a simple text file for the next release. The built-in layouts are already now stored in a text file. It's a matter of not overwriting user layouts when installing a new update though. Therefore they will need to go into their own file and have some more sophisticated validity checking.

This release also fixes a quite embarrassing bug: using 'Rotate stack' with too few arguments crashed YaRPNcalc. And finally it adds the 2^x function (this one I added for myself )

Version 1.4.2

2007-04-02T10:10:00.000+02:00

YaRPNcalc now supports square screen Pocket PCs (e.g Treo 750). This release also adds the possibility to rotate the stack and fixes a wrong conversion factor (in the bitrate conversions). You can download the new release here.

Version 1.4.1 and User Guide

2007-03-03T08:08:00.000+01:00

I made a new release which makes loading the user conversions file more robust. I had a corrupt version of that file on my PocketPC (for whatever reason) which crashed YaRPNcalc.

I also started writing a User Guide on the main website.

Version 1.4

2007-02-26T10:01:00.000+01:00

This release comes with a new user interface. The buttons are now rounded and coloured to show grouping (replaces the underlying coloured rectangle). The font for the number keypad is bigger and the symbols are nicer. Power math function buttons now use superscript instead of the ^ symbol. You can see some more screenshots here.

Additionally, I implemented the two user suggestions mentioned in the Version 1.3.3 comment of this blog: the delta % function as well as a special keypad giving access to all hex numbers (0 to F) at once.

Version 1.3.3

2006-12-14T18:28:00.000+01:00

While working on some new YaRPNCalc functionality I found a pretty severe bug. When switching to engineering mode with the number 0 on the stack, the calculator would freeze (enter a busy loop). Version 1.3.3 fixes this bug. You can download it here.

Version 1.3.2

2006-04-24T22:49:00.000+02:00

It was brought to my attention that YaRPNcalc miserably fails when the device's regional settings decimal point symbol is not actually a point (.). So that is what version 1.3.2 fixes. The decimal point symbol as well as the thousands separator now depend on the device's regional settings.

Version 1.3

2006-04-19T22:27:00.000+02:00

I just released version 1.3 of YaRPNcalc. This version includes the new menu button handling mentioned in my last post.

Additionally, I implemented a little tool that generates a currency conversion file out of an exchange rates file generated by the Bank of Canada Exchange Rates web service. What this means is that you can use that web service to create an up-to-date exchange rates file, then use my tool to convert that to a file which can be read by YaRPNcalc. The tool is available on the YaRPNcalc history page or here is a direct link. A small user guide that explains how to create and download the exchange rates file and how to convert it to a file that YaRPNcalc can read and copy it to your Pocket PC is included in that package.

Menus and the conversion mode

2006-04-10T22:12:00.000+02:00

In a former post I mentioned an idea of how to make the conversion mode better accessible. To achieve this, I now changed the way the two menu buttons work. Until version 1.2 (the current version), conversions are implemented as a base (i.e. BIN, OCT, HEX, DEC, CONV). But the conversion mode is really the same as the decimal mode. The conversion 'base' existed to change the function of the menu button.

The menus now work like this:

LEFT MENU	RIGHT MENU	LEFT MENU	RIGHT MENU
Menu	Function	Menu	Function
(press)			(press)
Constants	Back	Back	Convert
(press)			(press)
Menu	Back	Back	Function

Pressing back always takes you back to the digits panel.

Version 1.2

2006-04-09T13:40:00.000+02:00

Version 1.2 is now available. It implements user constants and user conversions. Also, I finally fixed the problem of big binary numbers not being visible completely. When switching to 32bit binary mode, the stack display now uses a smaller font. The release also contains some bug fixes and some minor cosmetic changes.

Almost there

2006-04-05T22:45:00.000+02:00

I'm almost ready with a new release. User constants and conversions are implemented and everything is now using non-xml text files, which makes startup a bit faster and the definition files a bit smaller. It's really not that much of a difference though. There are still some small things that I need to fix before I can make the release.

Progress

2006-04-04T08:25:00.000+02:00

User conversions and user constants are basically implemented. I'm still working on changing the code from using xml files to non-xml text files. One performance issue on startup turned out to be initializing (or jitting?) the xml parser. Also, the non-xml text files are obviously much smaller then their xml counter parts, e.g. the constants file is now about 1k compared to about 5k when using xml.

User conversions and user constants

2006-04-01T22:02:00.000+02:00

Unfortunately, I didn't have time to work on YaRPNcalc for quite some time now. I was very busy with my 'real' work and just came back from Frankfurt where we showed our new mixing console for the very first time. If someone's interested in what I'm doing for a living, check out this site: soundcraftdigital.com.
Concerning YaRPNcalc: I implemented user conversions about two weeks ago, but I wanted to add user constants to that before making a new release. I hope I will find the time to do that in the next couple of days.

About startup time

2006-03-27T21:15:00.000+02:00

On my device, a Qtek 9100 Pocket PC phone, YaRPNcalc takes about 10 seconds to start up. The Qtek 9100 uses a processor with a fairly low clock speed. For a phone, this is obviously a good thing, since it improves running time. Nevertheless, I would very much like YaRPNcalc to startup faster. To do performance improvement on software, you first need measurements. So that's what I did. What I found out is the following: About half of those 10 seconds pass before the first line of my code is even called. I guess this is the load time of the .NET compact framework plus the first bunch of just-in-time compilation. Of the other 5 seconds, the big parts are loading the files (constants, conversions and settings) and creating the forms. It might be possible to improve the loading of the files by making them smaller, or by changing to a different format (not xml). For the forms I thought I found something really good, an old MSDN article (from March 2002) called 'Improving Microsoft .NET Compact Framework-based Application Form Load Performance'. The result was quite disappointing. Of the resulting overall performance improvement of 55% I got about 0% (nothing that is). What I suspect now is that those performance improvements might have been implemented in a newer version of the .NET Compact Framework (maybe in SP2). Those changes had something good nevertheless; they made the code cleaner.

Progress

2006-03-23T20:40:00.000+01:00

I started working on the user definable conversions. I'm more in an experimenting phase at the moment. The problem is entering the label and conversion value. I want to keep as close as possible to the current 'design'. Other than that I was thinking about the Conversion mode. It really only exists so I can change the Function menu into the Convert menu. If there was a way to activate both of those with the same menu button, that would be cool. What I don't want is to use a menu, i.e. having to press the menu button and select either Function or Convert would spoil the whole principle. Nicer would be: short press -> Function, long press -> Convert. But I don't know if that is possible with the .NET Compact Framework.

Version 1.1

2006-03-19T23:01:00.000+01:00

Version 1.1 is ready. It contains a bunch of new functions, 1000's separators and the possibility to show the constants' values on the constant selection form. The functions can now be selected via three pages (I called them A, B and C in lack of a better name). That is a total of 3x4x4 functions. With the refactoring I've done for this version, it's quite simple to define which function is available on which button and on which page. I'll most likely move those definitions out into an .xml file as I've done for the constants and the conversions. As usual, I did only rudimentarily test this new version. So if anyone other than myself is using YaRPNcalc I would really appreciate if you would report bugs or problems in my forum (which you can use anonymously, without registration) or just send me an email.

Almost there

2006-03-19T00:02:00.000+01:00

I had less time today than I expected. Nevertheless, I implemented absolute value, polar to rectangular and vice versa, hyperbolic functions, combination and permutation. For the 1.1 release I want to add some statistics functions to that (mean, median and variance). Unfortunately (for the project), it will be excellent skiing wheater tomorrow . But I hope I'll have some time tomorrow evening to work on the project.

Refactoring done

2006-03-18T08:20:00.000+01:00

I completed the refactoring mentioned in the previous post Thursday night. It's now quite easy to add new functions or to use defined constants and conversions on function buttons (like the quick constant and quick convert, but fixed). I hope I'll find the time later this afternoon to add the functions deej requested in the forum, and maybe some more...

Major refactoring

2006-03-16T08:32:00.000+01:00

Despite what I said in my last post I started doing a major rework in the constants and functions part of the code now. Apart from making the code much cleaner I also hope to reduce the executable's size (or at least keep it the same, but with more functionality) and maybe also improve startup time somewhat.

Progress

2006-03-13T22:19:00.000+01:00

I'm working on making space for more functions now. I would have an 1.0.1 release ready, where I implemented 1000's separator and a 'show values' mode for the constants form. Don't know if anyone cares for that release though. The refactoring to add more math functions is basically done. It's now a matter of actually adding those functions.

Version 1.0

2006-03-12T00:50:00.000+01:00

I started this project on the 27th of January and spent a lot (actually most) of my spare time with it. What I wanted was a simple calculator which I could use without using the stylus. Now version 1.0 is done. YaRPNcalc 1.0 already implements more functionality than I initially planned and obviously is now my calculator of choice for my Pocket PC. But the project is not complete yet, there are still plans on how to make it even better...

Award!

2006-03-10T07:24:00.000+01:00

The ways of the internet fascinate me. I uploaded YaRPNcalc (version 0.3) to FreewarePPC.com about a month ago. That was the only site I uploaded it to. A few days later, it was popping up on several other freeware sites, mostly non-english ones.

Three days ago I got an email from softonic.com. They told me that they added YaRPNcalc to their freeware listing and that YaRPNcalc has been awarded 3 1/2 stars (of 5). I thought: Wow! I already got an award. 4th best rating. They also offer an award badge you can include on your web site (which I did of course).

The disappointment came when I looked at the different kinds (sizes) of badges they offer. The lowest rating they seem to give is actually 3 stars. So YaRPNcalc is actually rated 2nd worst! I got myself up again by telling myself that they certainly wouldn't list anything worse than 3 stars

Space for more functions

2006-03-09T20:37:00.000+01:00

The main goals of YaRPNcalc are simplicity and usability by providing big buttons and being consistent. Nevertheless, speed of operation is just as important. In other words: I don't want to use a calculator where I need the stylus. I don't want to use a calculator where I have to learn a new concept of operation on each other (but similar) form of the application. And I don't want to use a calulator where I need to press 5 buttons to access a function I regularly use.

The problem is that you can't have all of this to the same extent. You need to find a good compromise. To have buttons big enough to press with the fingers, I already introduced one level of indirection (one button press) to get to all but the most basic functions (all but the four basic arithmetic operations). I introduced a nonexistent base system (the conversion mode) to have access to conversions with one level of indirection (after you changed to that mode). This obviously means you can't really use conversions and arithmetic functions together, but I'm happy with the compromise. Constants need two levels of indirection, but I got the quick constants button, which gives you the most recently used constant with one level of indirection (the same goes for the last conversion, by the way).

Now the wish came up (in the forum) to provide more arithemtic functions. One good suggestion is the INV button, which is used on many calculators to have 'complementary' functions on the same button. This would introduce one more level of indirection for some functions.

When thinking about how to implement custom conversion and custom constants I came up with an other idea: custom function button assignment. Look at the following sketch (assuming that no one ever actually reads this makes statements like this kind of weird).

Note the Edit button on the top right side. It will bring up a form where you can add, remove and change the order of the constants (this form will actually need to be used with the stylus).

Now look at the sketch for the conversion form:

Again, the Edit button on the top right, the 'Change page' button on the top left.

Now, obviously the functions form could look like this:

Again, an Edit button on the top right. Instead of Paging buttons I would restrict myself to three pages though, only to have a guaranteed access time of mostly two levels of indirection (and because I'm not planning to have user definable functions).

Now, if that edit-function-buttons form would allow you to assign any of the built-in functions to any button on the three available forms, this would give you quite some flexibility. It would also allow you to 'simulate' the INV button, by assigning the buttons accordingly.

Now the fact that no one actually reads this comes to my advantage, because I don't want to raise any expectations.

The constants definition file

2006-03-07T22:00:00.000+01:00

The constants are defined in a file called constants.xml which is in the same directory as the program executable. The file's structure is as follows:


<Constants>
  <Constant>
    <Name>permeability</Name>
    <Abbreviation>µ0</Abbreviation>
    <Unit>H/m</Unit>
    <Value>1.25663706144e-6</Value>
  </Constant>
  <Constant>
    <Name>speed of light</Name>
    <Abbreviation>c</Abbreviation>
    <Unit>m/s</Unit>
    <Value>299792458</Value>
  </Constant>
</Constants>

The number of Constant entries is theoretically unlimited. Their order defines the order in which they appear on the constants form. The current element names are self explaining, although I will most likely make them shorter, in order to decrease the file size. Note that the unit is not used in the application yet.

Version 0.9

2006-03-06T22:21:00.000+01:00

I just finished version 0.9. You can download it here. New in this version is the engineering mode which always had its button but is now finally implemented.

As mentioned in a previous post, I now moved the constants as well as the conversion definitions out of the code into xml files. This allows users to add their own constants or conversions as well as to change their order. Of course it's also possible to get rid of unwanted constants or conversions. I'll definitely add functionality to do that from within the application. But first I'll describe how the xml files work in case anyone wants to try changing them now. I'll maybe post that tomorrow.

YaRPNcalc Web Site

2006-03-04T07:24:00.000+01:00

I put together a small web site to host the YaRPNcalc project. It makes it easier to handle the release history and also allows me to host the files directly on the web site. The web site can be found here.

Progress

2006-03-03T22:10:00.000+01:00

Apart from loading the constants from a file I also finally implemented the engineering display mode. This display mode adjusts the mantissa so that the exponent is always a multiple of three, e.g. 12345 is displayed as 12.345e3.

Also, I'm setting up a small web site to host the project. No more getting annoyed at filelodge.

Unicode xml files

2006-03-03T21:53:00.000+01:00

While implementing loading the constants from a file, instead of having them hard-coded in the code, I noticed that because of a few special characters (greek letters) I had to make the xml file UNICODE. Unfortunately this doubles the size of the file, even though it's only because of a few characters. The current constants file contains 30 constants and has a size of 9kB, with the constant entries looking like this:

<constant>
<name>speed of light</name>
<abbreviation>c</abbreviation>
<unit>m/s</unit>
<value>299792458</value>
</constant>

Obviously, the tag names could just be made shorter to considerably decrease the file's size.

Version 0.8

2006-03-02T19:42:00.000+01:00

Version 0.8 is now available. I added the constants functionality and implemented a custom button that can draw multiple lines of text (I'm using just 2) as well as indicate an 'active' state by drawing a thicker upper and lower border. That replaces the [text] I used before, which used precious horizontal space.

The constants form supports two view modes, one with small buttons that shows only constant abbreviations and another with large buttons that shows the constant's name as well. I'll maybe also add the possibility to show the value instead of the name.

I didn't decide on how to implement the user definable constants (and conversions) yet. The next thing I'll do will therefore be moving the constant and conversion definitions out of the code into .xml files. How it's implemented this should be fairly easy and would make the application nicely extensible.

Version 0.7

2006-02-19T12:04:00.000+01:00

I just finished version 0.7. It contains the usual logic functions for the HEX, OCT and BIN modes. I also started to move some of the panel code out of the InitializeComponent() function which is 'managed' by the resource editor. This will later allow me to implement and use custom buttons.

Unforunately, I wasn't able to upload the new version to filelodge, which seems to be massively overloaded. I already had problems with the site in the past. I now uploaded to http://wkccp.com/ but am looking for a better solution for file storage.

I'll not work on the calculator for another week because I'll be in the US for a corporate engineering meeting.

Version 0.6

2006-02-11T00:42:00.000+01:00

I did some more testing, still not much though. Nevertheless I made a new version. The only new functionality is the integer modes (HEX, OCT and BIN) now support three precisions: 32bit, 16bit and 8bit. The old problem of the screen limiting the stack output to 21 bit remains though. I'll address this later. There's another minor annyoance I noticed: the integer precisions can only be changed by toggling through them from 32bit to 16bit to 8bit. In the case of a number being on the stack which is valid for 16bit but not for 8bit, and you want to change to 32bit, you cannot do this at the moment, since you would have to go over the 8bit mode which gives an out-of-range error.

Next things I want to address are the constants and then the user conversion modes as well as the user definable constants. But first I'll be off for one week of holidays!

Progress

2006-02-10T10:38:00.000+01:00

I now implemented three different precisions for integer values, the idea being that when you switch to either HEX, OCT or BIN mode, you can restrict the values to being 32bit, 16bit or 8bit. The functionality is not well tested yet though, which is why I didn't make a release yet.

Version 0.5

2006-02-09T08:28:00.000+01:00

I implemented the factorial fuction this morning and also fixed two bugs. The more serious one made the error messages not show up anymore. You can download version 0.5 by clicking on the download link on the right.

Since I'm using double values the factorial function is good until factorial of 170.

Version 0.4

2006-02-08T21:37:00.000+01:00

I just uploaded version 0.4. Main new feature is the conversion mode. You activate it by changing the base from DEC to CONV in the Main menu. The Function menu will then change to Convert.

At the moment, the conversion mode offers a few standard conversions. I'll also implement user conversions though (because I want them for currency conversion ;-).

If you look at the above screenshot:
The top four buttons are the categories, you can toggle available categories by pressing the '1/2' button.
The 'Ref' button will let you change the current unit without actually doing a conversion.
Press one of the Unit buttons to convert the current stack argument to that unit.

When you switch back to the DEC mode from the CONV mode, the last conversion you made will be available as a fast conversion on the Function form.

For a complete list of changes in this version see the release history under the download link.

About Subversion and special characters

2006-02-07T22:32:00.000+01:00

I had a nasty problem with subversion right from the start and finally have a solution for it. As always, the solution is quite obvious when you finally have it.

The problem with subversion is that it treats files with UTF16 characters as binary. Because I had a single such character in one of the source files (the square root character '√'), subversion treated the file as binary which as a consequence doesn't let you diff the file anymore.

I first thought I could use C# partial class feature which lets you define different parts of the same class in different files, but the version of C# (or of the .NET framework) I'm using doesn't seem to support it yet.

The solution is much simpler though. There's a special escape sequence to embed unicode characters into a string: '\xhhhh'. So '√x' becomes '\x221ax'.

Progress

2006-02-05T22:50:00.000+01:00

I'm now using double values for decimal and 32 bit integer values for hex, oct, bin. Nevertheless, with the currently used font for the stack window I can only show 21 bits when in binary display mode. I'm still looking for a satisfactory solution for this problem.

Apart from this I started implementing the conversion functionality. There will be some standard conversion categories plus user definable categories with 12 possible 'units' each.

New ideas

2006-02-03T09:04:00.000+01:00

I now decided to build in conversion functions and constants. Currently the idea is to make constants available by pressing the 'Func' softkey followed by the 'Const' softkey (at the moment that softkey is unused). For conversions I will most likely introduce a new mode on the Menu form which will replace the function softkey by a conversion softkey. I also introduced some colours to group related buttons together and make the connection to the respective indication button at the top.

Version 0.3

2006-02-02T07:19:00.000+01:00

I finished verison 0.3 yesterday evening. All numeral systems are now implemented, though Oct and Bin are still limited. I also implemented storing of the settings, except for the stack which will come later.

What's missing?

Logic functions
I want to build in currency conversion
Maybe other conversions
Maybe constants
Maybe undo
storing the stack

Version 0.2

2006-01-31T22:41:00.000+01:00

The second release is ready. You can download version 0.2 here.

This release implements all of the decimal functions and the degree and radian modes.

I think I'll address storing the settings next.

Since this is all running on a mobile device, I think it would be a good idea to also include currency conversion.

Progress

2006-01-30T22:29:00.000+01:00

Haven't done much coding this evening. But I did set up a subversion repository for the project. Even if it's not much code, it just feels saver. For example when I changed the menu/function pages from being their own forms (dialogs) to panels which can be shown/hidden, I thought for just an instant that I might give up the project if it didn't turn out better, just because it would be so much work to change it all back to how it was. I dismiss code changes that turn out bad all the time at work, but of course that's no problem with source control in place. Apart from the fact that I get paid for it ;-)

Version 0.1

2006-01-29T18:02:00.000+01:00

A first version is ready. You can download version 0.1 here.

This version can already add up numbers (what I use my HP 48GX most for nowadays). Of course the other basic stuff is also working. Here's a short overview about what should be working and what's missing:

Entering numbers, basic arithmetic functions is working.

Extended arithmetic functions, except for percent and trigonometric functions are working.

Degree / Radian mode doesn't do anything (since the trigonometric functions are missing).

Oct, Bin mode not implemented yet.

Engineering mode not implemented yet.

Further missing are logic functions for HEX, OCT, BIN
Settings and stack are not stored yet.

Also missing is the SIP mode. The idea is to extend the stack window when the SIP is shown, since the keys can't be used anymore anyways. You can see what I mean when you open the SIP.

Dialog vs. Panel

2006-01-28T19:27:00.000+01:00

I first tried using a dialog to show the function buttons, but switching to the dialog turned out to be disapointingly slow. I'm now using panels which I show and hide, which is a bit faster.

What's it gonna look like?

2006-01-28T11:00:00.000+01:00

So here's what it's going to look like: simple, with big buttons.

The two softkeys will show two new screens, both having same sized buttons. One will have buttons for the usual math functions. The other will have buttons to swap arguments, clear the stack, switch bases, stuff like that.

Yet another RPN calculator for PocketPC

2006-01-27T17:00:00.000+01:00

I'm writing yet another RPN calculator for my PocketPC (actually a phone, a QTEK 9100). What I want is a simple RPN calculator which can be used without a stylus (with fingers, that is).

I'm using C# and the .NET Compact Framework.

The plan is to host it on this site.