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Release Digest: GNOME, July 27, 2004

gcalctool v5.5.0

Gcalctool is the default GNOME desktop calculator.

It has Basic, Financial and Scientific modes. Internally it uses
multiple precision arithmetic to produce results to a high degree
of accuracy.

This release is for consideration for GNOME 2.7 assuming the
release team are okay with this late feature request (see previous
email from me on that).

Note that gcalctool now requires the Gtk+ libraries that comes
with GNOME 2.6 or later in order to build.

Changes since the last gcalctool version (4.4.8).

  • Major new release of gcalctool. Incorporates an arithmetic
    operator precedence mode (currently the default why it’s been
    debugged). To get the old style, uncheck View->Use Arithmetic
    Precedence from the menu bar.
  • The “(” and “)” buttons have moved from the scientific mode
    into the Basic mode so that they are now available to users who
    need them but not everything that the Scientific mode
    provides.
  • There is a footer message area that provides feedback.
  • The display area now has an horizontal scrollbar.
  • Typing in the keyboard shortcuts for the various gcalctool
    buttons autocompletes their entry into the display area.
  • Tooltips show button’s shortcut.

This work comes from Sami Pietila in Finland and fixes up one of
the oldest bugs against gcalctool (bug #121710).

For testing purposes, the default mode is currently to use
Arithmetic Operator Precedence. If this version of gcalctool is
going into GNOME 2.8, it is still to be decided whether it will
remain the default there.

We are looking for folks to give this new version of gcalctool a
good testing and to report back any problems found as soon as
possible. As with all new code, it is expected there will be a few
bugs lurking that need to be found and fixed.

There is a known problem with arithmetic operator precdence mode
not displaying correcly when “Show Thousands Separtor” is checked.
See;

http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=148515

You can download this new version from:

http://ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/sources/gcalctool/5.5/

[Although some of the ftp mirrors may take a little while to
sync].

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