\nThose of you who have been reading Irreal for a while know that I’m a huge fan of Emacs Calc. It’s tremendously flexible and comprehensive and it’s built into Emacs. But that comprehensiveness comes at a price: it’s very<\/i> hard to learn its commands and they always prove evanescent if you don’t use them regularly. I’ve been through the manual a couple times and I still can’t remember how to use most of Calc. I almost always bring up the cheat sheet when I need to do anything more than the basic calculator functions.\n<\/p>\n
\nCharles Choi to the rescue. We haven’t heard from Choi for a while and now we know why. He’s been busy building a porcelain for Emacs Calc<\/a>. It’s a transient menu that helps you remember many of the esoteric Calc commands. When you get stuck, you can bring up the menu and navigate your way to the proper command.\n<\/p>\n \nChoi says that he’s not trying to provide full coverage of the Calc commands, just the most\u2014for some value of “most”\u2014used commands. You can read about his goals and non-goals at his post.\n<\/p>\n \nThe package is on MELPA and although Choi doesn’t give the \nI just installed it so I don’t have a lot of experience with it yet but so far I really like it. The menu doesn’t appear until you invoke it and it disappears after you choose a command so it doesn’t get in the way. I can see this package making Calc more approachable and increasing its usage. If you’re a Calc user or would like to be, you definitely want to take a look at Choi’s post.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Those of you who have been reading Irreal for a while know that I’m a huge fan of Emacs Calc. It’s tremendously flexible and comprehensive and it’s built into Emacs. But that comprehensiveness comes at a price: it’s very hard … Continue reading use-package<\/code> recipe for installing it, here’s what I used:\n<\/p>\n(use-package<\/span> casual<\/span>\n :ensure<\/span> t\n :bind<\/span> (:map<\/span> calc-mode-map (\"C-o\"<\/span> . 'casual-main-menu)))\n<\/pre>\n<\/div>\n