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Call for Help

Tuesday, October 24th, 2006

I created a site at SourceForge for the Jac calculator. Unfortunately I don’t have the time due to my business work to set up the CVS and other goodies at SourceForge. If anyone out there would like to help me with this I’d really appreciate it. Either drop me a line here on this site or e-mail me and we can work to setup the CVS at SourceForge!

Many thanks!

Jac Calc at SourceForge.

Test Version 2.0 Revised

Monday, October 9th, 2006

Several people suggested some changes to the calculator. I also found a better way to execute the grammar. This version does not represent the grammar as I ultimately want it to be but it is much more intuitive than the last version. I’m hoping that in one or two more test releases I should have version 2.0 finalized.

I’m not going to put up anymore documentation such as the JavaNCSS, ckjm, and whatnot until I’m done. If you have any questions, feel free to drop me a line. That being said, I will post the grammar this time around to give you an idea of the final operation.
I appreciate everyone’s input. I’m nearly there!

Download Jac v.2.0.291 [TEST]

Download application zip 863Kb
Download source zip 503Kb

Version 2.0 Ready for Testing

Sunday, September 10th, 2006

I’ve finally rolled up the major changes for version 2.0. I’m making it available for testing now. After I’ve confirmed that everything works as it should I’ll make the final zip file available to the usual download sites. Remember this version is still considered to be under test! Please report back on any bugs found. In the meantime, you can download it here:

Download Jac v.2.1.283 [TEST]

Download application zip 860Kb
Download source zip 502Kb

Screenshot:

Jac 2.0 Devel

In no particular order:
Javadoc
JavaNCSS
CheckStyle
ckjm

Version 2.0 Progress

Tuesday, September 5th, 2006

After initial setbacks and some reconsiderations on my part as to what should be included in a second version of Jac, I’ve finally made some decent progress on the next iteration. I initially wanted to have a prefix and postfix expression evaluator but I found that I could not easily translate what was built in the first version to fulfill these requirements. I backed up, looked at adding functionality to the original infix expression evaluator and decided that doing so would give me more bang for my buck.

I’ve now added the trigonometric functions to the infix engine as well as the natural log function. Naturally, the command-line implementation of the calculator is adjusting nicely to the added functionality but the GUI is becoming troublesome. The biggest problem lies in the fact that it is easy to add functionality to the engine but the screen quickly becomes cluttered with buttons for every function that’s added. The ideal solution would be to have a SHIFT button that would temporarily change the function of every button on the panel to fit the user’s need. I have no idea how to implement such a thing and I may not even attempt it.

One idea that has crossed my mind is to freeze development of the GUI at some point where I’ve decided that enough of the underlying engine is accessible to consider the GUI a practical application and then let the command-line interface run away with the complete functionality of the engine.

Testing and pondering continues. In the meantime here is a screenshot of Jac as in stands right now:

Jac 2.0 Devel

Version 2.0

Saturday, September 2nd, 2006

I have began work on version 2.0 of the Jac calculator. As proud of version 1.0 as I am, I recognize that it had significant shortcomings. The logging mechanism was improperly implemented, forcing the user to use the logging command-line option to launch the command-line interface. The correct operation would be to use the default operation of allowing the logging to not be displayed. Besides that, I also wanted to beef up the expression evaluator to allow for more mathematic operations than just the main four and exponentiation.

Another important item to add in version 2.0 is improved testing and source metrics. I’ve already been able to add ckjm and JavaNCSS to the ant file.
Once these things are done, I plan to package it all up in an installer for Windows versions. The Linux version will remain in a zip file. I’m still trying to formulate a concrete list of objectives to complete for version 2.0 so any input would be appreciated.