[hemant]

Its been a few years since I switched to macs and every now and then I would learn about some cool feature of OS X that would just blow me away. Today I found out about the hidden calculator (AppleScript). Very often I'll be typing an email or surfing the web and I'll want to do some simple math like say "3.1415 * 3.5 ^ 2" but to do this I'll have to open the Calculator application make a few clicks to input the numbers and its a big pain. I would rather use a real calculator, but I just found out in Tiger all you need to do is type in some expression "3.1415 * 3.5 ^ 2" or even "pi * 3.5 ^ 2" select it and press command + shift + 8 and you have the result replacing your selection. That is just amazing. This works in Mail, Safari, TextEdit and almost all the applications that I have tried. It seems to work even in 10.3. I'm sure most of you guys must be aware of it but there would be others (like me) who would find this helpful. I thought I'll share.

[Gee4orce]

Haha - that is cool. Thanks for sharing.

2 + 2 = 4

[Macola]

Doesn't work for me in Mail...beachballs and I have to force quit

[hemant]

Check your Mail Preferences (Composing), if your mail format is "Rich Text" it might not work, should work with "Plain Text" though. But I don't see why you should get the beach ball.

[monkeybrain]

That is very cool, a pity the apple script has to launch too, but still cool. I wonder if they could integrate it nicely in Leopard, ala the dictionary window that pops up.

[Peter]

doesn't work for me :/

[Macola]

Originally Posted by hemant

Check your Mail Preferences (Composing), if your mail format is "Rich Text" it might not work, should work with "Plain Text" though. But I don't see why you should get the beach ball.

No. I'm using plain text. It works in TextEdit, TextWrangler, Camino, and others. Could be due to the other Applescripts I have in Mail.

[CharlesS]

Hey, that's great! Thanks a lot for that tip. I think I'll be making a lot of use of this. It works in every app that supports Services, which includes all Cocoa apps.

Unfortunately, Word is not one of those apps. I hope those rumors of iWork getting a spreadsheet and a proper font menu are true - I may consider switching if that happens.

[Gossamer]

That's pretty cool...I actually converted the expressions you guys wrote directly in Safari...so 2 + 2 = 4 became 4 = 4 in my browser window.

[GSixZero]

Doesn't work for me either. I think this is because they way it's being run (through the script service) and because Apple + * (or apple shift 8) is listed as "Get result of Applescript", and script editor may think you mean different scripts. When I do it, it pastes whatever is on the clipboard into the text box.

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm guessing the calculator trick works if you've never used script editor before.

[Chuckit]

Doesn't work for me. Odd.

[JKT]

Get CalcService (free) which lets you do even more. From the same developer as WordServices.

[freakboy2]

yeah wow, this totally screws up my mail.. none of the commands really work anymore.

how totally annoying.

so fyi, before you try this get ready to totally fuxor your machine.

[CharlesS]

What do you mean by "none of the commands"?

[- - e r i k - -]

2 + 2

Nope. Doesn't work for me at all. Weird.

[moonmonkey]

works for me, launches script editor in the background.

[Orion27]

Only works in TextEdit for me

[xi_hyperon]

Originally Posted by - - e r i k - -

4

Nope. Doesn't work for me at all. Weird.

Works in mine, apparently.

[MPMoriarty]

Works for me in Safari's Google search.

[- - e r i k - -]

Originally Posted by xi_hyperon

Works in mine, apparently.

Thanks, I'll be sure to call on you for all my math problems from now on

[dmetzcher]

Doesn't work for me...

A while back, about 8 months ago, it would not work. A few weird things happened other than this, and I decided to reinstall the OS from scratch. This was one of the first things that I tested, and it finally worked. Now, it no longer works again.

It's quite annoying. I'd love to know why it works, but then simply stops working for no obvious reason. Deleting preference files for Script Editor does nothing.

Anyone have any idea why it would stop working?

[dmetzcher]

Whatever the problem is, it's with my account, because this works in another account that I have set up on my machine. Weird.

[Judge_Fire]

Works, if I use the correct shortcut for my keyboard, which is cmd-shift-' , or cmd-* (same thing).

[JKT]

Originally Posted by dmetzcher

Whatever the problem is, it's with my account, because this works in another account that I have set up on my machine. Weird.

You probably installed something with a conflicting keyboard shortcut.

[dmetzcher]

Originally Posted by JKT

You probably installed something with a conflicting keyboard shortcut.

It's not the shortcut. It see the TextEdit menu light up briefly when I press the keys, so I know there is no conflict. Also, I tested it by clicking the menu item itself. The problem we (many of us) are having is not a shortcut issue, it's a problem with this service not working at all, regardless of which of the three menu items under Services -> Script Editor is used.

I've been looking for an answer to this problem for months now, and have never seen one posted anywhere on the Web. All the questions, on every board I've looked at, including Apple's, have gone unanswered. This feature is clearly problematic, at best, and seems to stop working for many people after several months, for whatever reason. It's just not reliable enough to be useful, frankly.

[qnxde]

Doesn't work for me either FWIW, the textedit menu flashes and that's it.

[DeathMan]

works great for me in my chat text area and google box, and maybe even this...lets try a good one 10^(10/5) => 100.0 seems to work. Thats pretty spiff

[kman42]

Spiffy.

[JKT]

Originally Posted by dmetzcher

It's not the shortcut. It see the TextEdit menu light up briefly when I press the keys, so I know there is no conflict. Also, I tested it by clicking the menu item itself. The problem we (many of us) are having is not a shortcut issue, it's a problem with this service not working at all, regardless of which of the three menu items under Services -> Script Editor is used.

I've been looking for an answer to this problem for months now, and have never seen one posted anywhere on the Web. All the questions, on every board I've looked at, including Apple's, have gone unanswered. This feature is clearly problematic, at best, and seems to stop working for many people after several months, for whatever reason. It's just not reliable enough to be useful, frankly.

Install CalcService instead and see if it works (link is toward the bottom of that page).

[Landos Mustache]

I just use the damn dashboard one.

[eddiecatflap]

me too

the calculator app is buggy as ....

[MPMoriarty]

Hmmm...it doesn't appear to work in Mail

[nuckin futs]

at first i thought it didn't work, all it did was paste what was on the clipboard...but you actually have to follow the directions. i wasn't highlighting the problem/expression.
BTW, it works with the stickies too. it just sucks that it launches applescript.

[dmetzcher]

Originally Posted by nuckin futs

at first i thought it didn't work, all it did was paste what was on the clipboard...but you actually have to follow the directions. i wasn't highlighting the problem/expression.
BTW, it works with the stickies too. it just sucks that it launches applescript.

Yeah, launching AppleScript is clunky. I understand doing it for the evaluation of an actual script, but there should be a calc service that evaluates expressions without resorting to AppleScript.

[dmetzcher]

Originally Posted by JKT

Install CalcService instead and see if it works (link is toward the bottom of that page).

Thanks! I've installed it. I'll test it in a few.

[Camelot]

If you don't have CalcServices installed, Command-Shift-8 (or, more specifically, Command-*) is assigned to the Script Editor -> Get Result of AppleScript service menu.

As a result you can select any text that's valid AppleScript and invoke it via Command-Shift-8.

For example, select the text:

beep 2

and Command-Shift-8 and you'll hear two beeps.

[turtle777]

CMD-* with beep 2 doesn't work.

Calc Service: beep 2
Result: Syntax error

-t

[Judge_Fire]

Originally Posted by what_the_heck

It appears you do have CalcServices installed and mapped to CMD-*.

The 'beep 2' thing was supposed to work with the default 'AppleScript' thing, not CalcServices.

[kcmac]

That is a nice trick. Works great in the Google search bar.

[hldan]

How's doing this any easier or faster than the dashboard calculator. If I have to download and instal an app to do that then it's not all that cool. We all can't be that lazy that we need to find a shortcut to calculator functions.

[Chuckit]

Originally Posted by hldan

How's doing this any easier or faster than the dashboard calculator.

It doesn't suck up a ton of memory and require you to wait 30 seconds for Dashboard to load. Just off the top of my head.

[voodoo]

Originally Posted by kcmac

That is a nice trick. Works great in the Google search bar.

Yeah, just press enter and *bingo* instant answer

V

[torifile]

works with quicksilver's text entry too. Activate quicksilver, press "." and type. I love QS more and more each day.

[cla]

This is so cool! Now we can paste scripts to each other, mark the script and hit cmd-*
Mark the bold text below, and hit cmd-*

tell application "Safari"

activate
set di to display dialog "Where do you want to go today?" default answer "http://www.microsoft.com"
open location text returned of di

end tell


(Although I get a 20 second stall when I do this...)

[Simon]

Originally Posted by cla

(Although I get a 20 second stall when I do this...)

Me too. Strange Safari lag.

[Sarc]

has to do with the keyboard layout (at least for me that was the problem). Changing it to English did the trick.
Alternatively you can use the asterisk on whatever key that your layout has it, or use the one on the keypad to avoid changing layouts.

[B Gallagher]

That's a cool feature. Thanks for mentioning it!

[CharlesS]

Originally Posted by cla

This is so cool! Now we can paste scripts to each other, mark the script and hit cmd-*
Mark the bold text below, and hit cmd-*

tell application "Safari"

activate
set di to display dialog "Where do you want to go today?" default answer "http://www.microsoft.com"
open location text returned of di

end tell


(Although I get a 20 second stall when I do this...)

We were always able to do that, though.

[Chuckit]

Ah, I remember that exploit.

[MindFad]

Ah! Very cool. I never knew.