Should calculators be able to read .txt files?

[StephenG1CMZ]

21st-century PC's have real problems handling compilable files, such as .py.
In the 20th Century it was trivial to rename a file, but not now.
If you cut-and-paste text, then ask Wordpad to save it as .py, it will pretend to do so.
In reality, it creates .py.txt.
Help says right-click/rename, but either help or pc is broken.

Given that creating a .py file on a PC seems utterly impossible, would it not make sense for calculators to handle reading and compiling .py.txt files, just like they can handle .py files.

I imagine this would avoid lots of problems in classrooms due to PC file formats being incompatible with calculators, which expect .py rather than .py.txt.

Platform: Windows PC and Casio CG50.
(Just to be clear, if you somehow create a .py file on the PC, it works - but most users will be unable to do so, even after years of PC experience)

[Maximilian Hohmann]

Hello!

(09-11-2024 11:45 AM)StephenG1CMZ Wrote:  In reality, it creates .py.txt.

Given that creating a .py file on a PC seems utterly impossible, would it not make sense for calculators to handle reading and compiling .py.txt files, just like they can handle .py files.

I am not a PC/Windows person, but I happen to have a PC here for a few weeks that I will later need at work for making aircraft navigation database updates.
It is not the latest one but definitely 21st century and runs "Windows 10 pro". BTW: I bought it on eBay for 25 Euro and a matching 24 inch "full HD" monitor for 5 Euro. As a 30 year long Macintosh addict I am used to somewhat different figures, even for entry level pre-owned machines :-)

From old days when I had to work with Windows, I remembered that there is a setting "Always display file extensions" ("Dateierweiterungen" in the german localised version). Enabling this setting will let you save files as ".py" without the ".txt" added. So it is easily possible, but one needs to know what one is doing. If I can do it, any teacher who uses Python capable calculators (mathematics and physics I guess) should be able to handle that too!

(09-11-2024 11:45 AM)StephenG1CMZ Wrote:  I imagine this would avoid lots of problems in classrooms due to PC file formats being incompatible with calculators, which expect .py rather than .py.txt.

This is probably why the large makers of education calculators provide PC software (eg. "TI connect" which also runs natively on my Macintosh, very well done Ti!) which communicates directly with the attached calculators, thereby bypassing the operating system and it's quirks!

Regards
Max

[Albert Chan]

Editor adding ".txt" extension is just for convenience.
If you don't want this feature, select Save Type = All (*.*)

[RPNerd]

(09-11-2024 11:45 AM)StephenG1CMZ Wrote:  In the 20th Century it was trivial to rename a file, but not now.

It still is.

One of the first things I do when setting up a new PC is deactivate Windows' stupid habit of hiding the file extension of known file types. It's because of this that people just go ahead and open files like "i_am_a_nasty_trojan.pdf.exe". It's utterly braindead to hide such valuable information from the user.

Just as braindead is relying on the filename extension to identify the type of file you're dealing with in the first place.