From: Bob Leif To: Stanley Allen et al. How do you wish to handle formulas? There are two possibilities that I favor. 1) Employ an Ada J code compiler as the macro language. 2) Employ MathML from the Worldwide Web consortium to build the formulas. I might note that these are NOT mutually exclusive. They can be combined. This GUI financial calculator could be the precursor of a commercial killer application. Most financial calculations are performed with spreadsheets. An XML based spreadsheet that employed Ada decimal types could be commercially competitive. -----Original Message----- From: Team Ada: Ada Advocacy Issues (83 & 95) [mailto:[log in to unmask]]On Behalf Of Stanley Allen Sent: Monday, June 19, 2000 11:18 PM To: [log in to unmask] Subject: idea for Ada showcase application Teamers: How about an open-source GUI financial caculator written in Ada, making use of decimal-digits fixed-point arithmetic and picture strings? I've been looking at some of the free (libre) Linux fin calcs and they seem to be using double (or worse, float) for all real calculations. I've been led to believe by some comments in this forum that floating-point is a poor choice for financial work. Could it be done better in Ada? What advantages could be claimed for such a calculator? Are there some current popular applications in this category to emulate? This train of thought occurred to me as I was making use of the MS Windows calculator. I was wondering if the Linux world had stabilized on a common desktop calculator yet, and if not perhaps an Ada implementation would be appropriate & attractive. The MS Windows calculator has a 'standard' view and a 'scientific' view. Perhaps a GTK+ based calculator for Linux which mimicked the MS Windows one and added an extra 'financial' view could become popular. Stanley Allen mailto:[log in to unmask]