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
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