NAME

sliderule - calculator featuring a historic slide rule

SYNOPSIS

sliderule [-display display] [-bw pixels] [-stip] [-rv] [-geometry geometry]

DESCRIPTION

Sliderule features a historic slide rule calculator. You can multiply, divide, calculate reciprocals, squares, square roots, and even trignometrical functions. Anyway, you need to know how to do this. You can't add or subtract - but if you know a sliderule, you knew this already. If you don't know, don't worry: this man page won't make you learning it either.

OPTIONS

-display displayname: This option specifies the X server to contact.
-geometry geometry: This option specifies the size and placement of the top level window. By default, the minimum size will be used. Doesn't work very well at all.
-fg color: This option specifies the foreground color to use.
-bg color: This option specifies the background color to use.
-bw pixels: This option specifies the border width in pixels.
-stip: This option indicates that the background of the calculator should be drawn using a stipple of the foreground and background colors. On monochrome displays this makes for a nicer display.
-rv: This option indicates that reverse video should be used.

OPERATION

The slide rule is operated with the pointer. The only keyboard input that has any effect at all is the key "q" to quit the program.

The slide rule consists mainly of three different areas: the outside scales that are normally fixed with the left hand, and the slider that is moved with the right hand. When moving the slider, a black background will become visible.

Pressing button 1 inside the outer part of the slide rule will move the hairline to the pointer position, and update the digital display at the left-hand side (some comfort a real slide-rule wasn't fond of). Moving the pointer around while keeping button 1 pressed, will drag the hairline.

Pressing button 2 or 3 in the outer part, will double or half the width of the slide rule, respectively. This doesn't work very well.

Pressing button 1 on the slider, or in the black area exposed by the moved away slider, will move the slider so that the pointer position will become the "1" on the slider. Moving the pointer then, while keeping the button pressed, will drag the slider accordingly.

Pressing button 3 on the slider, or in the black area, will behave similarly, using the "10" position of the slider.

Pressing button 2 on the slider allows you to grab and drag the slider without moving it first.

For the curious, the various scales are:

L mantissa of the decimal logarithm of D
A square of D
B square of C
CI reciprocal of C
C base scale
D base scale
DI reciprocal of D
S arc sine of D
T arc tangent of D

BUGS

Resizing of either way doesn't work pretty well. Best leave the geometry as it is.

Sliderule uses a prehistoric way to obtain X resources, which is not documented in this man page.

COPYRIGHT

AUTHORS

John Bradley, University of Pennsylvania
Mark Rosenstein, MIT Project Athena

HISTORY

Sliderule used to be the option "-analog" of the old xcalc application, up to X11R3. This option has been dropped later, when the stock X11 xcalc was rewritten as a Toolkit application. This sliderule application is just the old "-analog" code only, with some bugs and inaccuracies fixed, and the trigonometrical scales added. This work was done by Joerg Wunsch.