Hi Everyone,
I'm still on a short break from programming Emacs. But I'd like to
share with you something really interesting that I discovered
yesterday: Calc. Calc is a calculator package written in Emacs Lisp.
It is quite powerful and has features such as infinite precision,
symbolic algebra and calculus, hexidecimal and binary display modes,
etc. It has a 500-page manual! For a full set of features, see this
on-line manual, e.g.
http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/texinfodoc/calc_toc.html
Here is what you need to do to install Calc.
1. Download the file calc-2.02f.tar.gz from any GNU software mirror.
You can of course always get it at
ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/calc/calc-2.02f.tar.gz
2. Unpack this using StuffIt Expander. Since these are all source
files, it doesn't matter which end of line setting you use.
3. The resulting folder calc-2.02f can be placed anywhere on your
system. The instructions that follow assume you have put it in
:emacs-20.6:site-lisp:.
4. Open the Emacs application. Then load the file calc-maint.el by
typing:
M-x load-file RET ~/../site-lisp/calc-maint.el RET
5. Then byte-compile the Calc source files by typing
M-x calc-compile RET
(This will take a while.)
6. Then set up the autoloads and load path in your .emacs file by typing
M-x calc-private-autoloads RET
7. Build the Calc info file by first finding the file calc.texinfo
C-x C-f ~/../site-lisp/calc.texinfo RET
Ignore the bell and the message
Fontifying calc.texinfo...buffer too big
that Emacs generates. Then format the info file by typing
M-x texinfo-format-buffer
(This will take a while.) Ignore the bell and the message
Fontifying calc.info...buffer too big
8. Now exit and re-enter Emacs and you are ready to use Calc!
The prefix key for enter Calc is set to M-#. If you are using the
command key as meta key, M-# is also command-shift-3, which invokes
the screen shot function on the Mac. You can type ESC # instead, or
change the line
(global-set-key "\e#" 'calc-dispatch)
that Calc adds to your .emacs file. To get you started,
ESC # c starts Calc,
ESC # t gets you into the Calc tutorial, and
ESC # i show the info file for Calc.
Have fun! If anyone has interesting experience using Emacs on the
Mac, please share!
Andrew.
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