Category:	Utilities
Price:	Free
Popularity:	Low
Version String:	1.7.5
Release Date:	2023-10-29
Architecture:	Intel & AppleSilicon(ARM)
Minimum OS:	macOS 10.9
Vendor Name:	Pierre Chatelier
Homepage:	www.chachatelier.fr

Description:

Chalk is a calculator. Just a calculator. Thus, you are disappointed. But before being really disappointed, please read a little more.

You probably don't like usual Calculator softwares. I cannot blame you for that, because I agree. Usually, Calculators are awful tools, and you work faster by using a real desktop calculator. And that is why I have created Chalk.

I have built it by trying to answer the question "What are all those calculators doing wrong ?" And surprisingly, I have found a lot of answers.

Do not misunderstand : I do not say that advanced softwares like Octave, Matlab, Maple, are bad as well, but Chalk does not compete with them.
Chalk just wants to replace the terrible MacOS standard Calculator.app.

To summarize, Chalk wants to be a light tool, but since our computers are also ridiculously powerful, even a light tool could perform advanced computations for scientists. OS providers seem to have forgotten that a "computer" should be used to COMPUTE.


FEATURES

Chalk's compatibility starts with Mac OS 10.9 that brought in some interesting technologies. It is also limited to 64 bits (no 32 bits) to provide the best number limits.

PRETTY PRINT
Ok, this one is not very impressive. But you can type your whole expression before validate it, and, thanks to MathJax it is displayed with a pretty print that takes care of fractions, matrices, powers…

LARGE NUMBERS
Not very impressive as well, but handy : Chalk does not really care of the size of numbers. Thanks to the GMP library, it can handle easily numbers with millions of bits.

ADVANCED MATHS
It begins to be interesting. Chalk supports complexes, quaternions, matrices, lists...

UNCERTAINTY
This one is a major feature (at last!). It is certainly the best feature in fact. Chalks support absolute and relative uncertainty. What does that mean ?
• Even with a billion digits, some operations on numbers will always be inexact. Chalks knows the limits and only reports the true digits.
• You can compute a sequence of operations with uncertainty and get the uncertainty of the result

CONTROLLED APPROXIMATIONS
And while we talk about uncertainty, please understand that Chalk works with exact values as long as possible, and makes approximations only when needed. But even in this case, approximations are controlled. You can even know where approximations where made thanks to computation flags.

PRIMES
Chalk knows about primes. It can decompose numbers, test primality... And never lies. If the answer is probabilistic, it reports that fact.

BITS MANIPULATION
If you are a developer, you certainly often need to work at the bit level. And Chalk makes it really simple, yet very powerful, so that you can handle different bit representations, interpret an unsigned integer as a float, roll, shift, and so on.

GRAPHER WITH UNCERTAINTY
Since Chalk supports uncertainty, it can use it cleverly to display unambiguous graphs, where the uncertainty is reported, and no data disappear because of subsampling.

GRAPH PREDICATES
By the way, Chalk is also able to display a set of constraints (equalities, inequalities) to determine 2D areas of (x,y) predicates. And yet again, uncertainty makes it right : no sub-sampling will skip data.

AND MORE...
Honestly, I can't list all the features, it is boring for you and for me. You should better check if Chalk does the right thing for you. The embedded documentation can also be read online Chalk's full documentation