Intel Edison generic calculator shield photo journal

[Claudio L.]

(03-20-2015 07:13 AM)MarkHaysHarris777 Wrote:  One of the thoughts I have had for the improvement of hand-held calcs is to allow the user to specify arbitrary precision (within reasonable limits). The decimal library I use on my linux systems allows for that easily; it might be time to move that into a calculator.
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But, what if I allow for 200 digits, and scroll?

I agree, it's time to do that on a calculator. newRPL actually uses libmpdec, the same core library powering Python 3's new "accelerated" decimal library (accelerated is quoted because there's nothing hardware accelerated last time I checked, it's just a faster library). A demo with variable precision has been available since May 2014 on a PC, and has actually been running standalone on a 50g calculator since October 2014 (though not publicly available).
newRPL uses 2000 digits as "reasonable limits" for its transcendental functions and for overall memory management. But that limit could be raised with an Edison based calculator.

Sorry, I didn't mean to take your dream of being the first to implement it on a calculator, just wanted to encourage you to follow up on your line of thought, and show you that you are not the only one going in that direction (so your ideas aren't that crazy, it's perfectly doable!).
Keep going, we want a finished open-hardware calculator based on Edison that we can all play with.