InstantCalc1.1
for instantaneous calculations, ©1996-2000

Installation and Removal

InstantCalc is a Control Panel, therefore, it should reside in the Control Panels folder inside the System Folder to be operative. For this drag InstantCalc onto the symbol of your System Folder. You should confirm to put InstantCalc to the Control Panels and then restart your Macintosh. When first started, InstantCalc creates a file in the folder Preferences inside the System Folder which holds the user setup and the registration data. Beyond this, InstantCalc makes no permanent changes to your system and hard disk data. Therefore, InstantCalc can easily be removed just by drawing itself and its preference file into the trash.

Setup

In the InstantCalc Control Panel you can change the:

 • hot key combination˚<ctrl>-c is predefined

 • mouse click combinationÈ<ctrl>-mouse-click is predefined. MacOS 8/9 users should be aware,
ˇthat the <ctrl>-mouse-click combination is used for the contextual
ˇmenus. In this case either add a modifier key (i.e. <shift>-<ctrl>-
ˇmouse-click) or disable the mouse click option.

 • numerical accuracy˝defining the breaking conditions for the numerical methods
ˇ(Newton solver and Romberg integration, see InstantCalc Reference)
ˇthe iteration stops when either the absolute or relative change of the
ˇresult between successive iterations drops below the respective value.
ˇThe predefined values are 10-9 absolute and 10-7 relative.

 • number of significantsÛdefining the number of digits of the result. Minimum is 1 and maximum
ˇis 19. Since it is also possible to define the number of digits instantly
ˇ(see InstantCalc Reference), the maximum value of 19 is predefined.

 • modify help key settingÔchecked:ˆthe help key is active only with the given modifier key(s)
ˇ(this prevents loading the help system by accident)
ˇunchecked:Ïthe help key operates normally

Changes to the setup take effect immediately after closing the InstantCalc Control Panel, without restarting your Macintosh. However, the program SimpleCalc (which belongs to the InstantCalc package) also uses the above preferences, but read it only once at start-up. Therefore, if you made some changes within the InstantCalc Control Panel, having SimpleCalc open in the background, you may need to close and restart SimpleCalc after all.

Operation

InstantCalc operates on selected text and is invoked with either a hot key or a mouse click combination.

Upon invocation InstantCalc itself schedules a copy command for the selected text. Then it causes the front application to switch shortly to the background and again to the front after all. By this way it is guarenteed that the selected text is copied to the global scrap (the Clipboard) where InstantCalc can fetch it.

InstantCalc then analyses the copied text. If the clipboard contains no text (for any reason) InstantCalc simply issues a system beep. If it finds a valid mathematical expression, it does the calculation and replaces the content of the clipboard with the result. If the text in the clipboard is not a valid expression, InstantCalc prompts for correction with a small dialog displaying an error message and the error position in the expression.

After all InstantCalc schedules a paste command. In almost all cases this will result in replacing the previously selcted mathematical expression with its result. In most cases it is possible to undo this operation by entering the normal <command-z>, however, this depends on the capabilities of the host application. In some cases, the front application changes its context upon a foreground/background switch (i.e. the cursor moves to another position or the active input field becomes inactive), which normally affects the desired operation inappropriately. Try to use the mouse click combination for invoking InstantCalc in this case.

Sometimes you might want to keep the mathematical expression beside its result. This can be achieved simply by adding an equal sign "=" after the expression.