The developer of Calca was a Soulver user and fan who found it lacking for more scientific and technical operations (like working with matrices), and so he built Calca (about 8 years after the first Soulver was released, for the record ). Unlike Numi, Calca is not a Soulver copy though. Calca has an original UI, without an answer column and a special keystroke to make a line evaluate. It can be more useful for some tasks than Soulver @nmaxcom
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@zcohan I stand corrected! Thank you for explaining. From 2005 till now... would you consider open source it so we can all help it grow quicker and further? Calca is great, but I'd love to see a crowd-developed alternate.
@nmaxcom As of 3.2, Soulver no longer uses Math.js and has its own all-Swift math engine. This might become open source at some stage.
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@zcohan Well, those are important building blocks but they are just that. I'm a strong advocate of OS so I see open source code you'll use to try and profit with closed code. It's perfectly legit and valid so long you follow their licenses, still, I can't help in seeing the irony.
And then there's the eternal problem of money. But nowadays there are plenty of OS projects and products that have revenue streams, be it by sponsoring, crowdfunding like Patreon or Opencollective among many many more.
You can work alone with limited time and ideas to make a few bucks upon release or you can call in the OS army with their help in all areas (features, bugs etc.) and also make a few bucks while you make the world a better place. Best of luck in whatever you decide!
I am me, and I approve my message :)
PS: If I may, please make those number-variables scrollable! And if you don't know him already take a look at Bret Victor, a UI inspiration machine.
@nmaxcom Personally I don't see any conflict between ethical business and making the world a better place, but I appreciate your perspective. By the way, Soulver 3 actually has scrubbable numbers: hold down shift and hover over a number to show the scrubber. Inspired by Bret Victor's scrubbing calculator, inspired by Soulver 2 :).
Just to set the record straight, Numi copied Soulver and not the other way around. Soulver 1 was released in 2005, Soulver 2 in 2010. The Numi developer even thanked me for my syntax ideas by email. This is the third major release of a classic, absolutely original product. @wizardengineer
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@zcohan What's happening with the app store version? Are you offering a cross-grade?
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