SpeedCrunch: nice, but about the invocation and docs??

[Carl]

On Sunday 25 December 2005 11:48 am, Joe(theWordy)Philbrook wrote:
> SpeedCrunch: nice, but about the invocation and docs??
>
> I do have occasional use for a desktop calculator. My first inclination
> is to see if I can find the $15usd scientific calculator that should be,
> but almost never actually is, on my desk...
>
> I don't usually need a scientific but I like to be able to see and edit
> the whole "equation". Or modify one of the terms in a previous equation.
> Which is something I never could get kcalc to do. But since my real
> calculator is again among the missing I typed $ kcalc & in the  konsole
> window I was using on this kubuntu 5.10 system. Since kubuntu IS the kde
> version I was surprised to see "bash: kcalc: command not found".
> So I poked around the menu system until I found the entry labeled:
> "Calculator (SpeedCrunch)" which turned out to be a very keyboard
> oriented calculator that quickly impressed me so much I doubt I'll ever
> want to settle for kcalc again.
>
> But knowing that I'm much more likely to fire up an familiar kde tool
> from the bash prompt in a konsole window than to bother with the menu
> system or even the "run prompt" I made a note of the "(SpeedCrunch)"
> portion which I thought was supposed to be the executable name.
> yet the next time I wanted it:
> $ speedcrunch
> bash: speedcrunch: command not found
> $ SpeedCrunch
> bash: SpeedCrunch: command not found
> A quick look at the menu system confirmed the "(SpeedCrunch)" part, so
> in desperation I tried "Alt-f2 SpeedCrunch" And almost didn't hit enter
> because the little icon didn't change to even the generic executable
> icon.  Fortunately I hit enter anyway. And, from the run prompt, it
> worked.  As did "Alt-f2 speedcrunch" all I could find in help was a
> pointer to the man pages which didn't tell me much more than the
> alternate name "crunch" which DID work from the bash prompt, and did
> change the icon in the run prompt box. (If the real executable is
> "/usr/bin/crunch" shouldn't the menu system render the entry
> "Calculator (SpeedCrunch)" as "Calculator (crunch)" ????
>
> Since there wasn't much info on how to use crunch in the man page. Nor
> did I find much on it's actual use when I did a google search for it.
> Though I did learn where it's config file was. Though I don't see any
> thing in there to indicate a way to save it's window size so that I
> won't need to resize the durned thing every time I call it.
> I don't want full screen, But I'd like it to default to about three
> times it's window width so that fairly long equations display without
> scrolling. Anybody got a hint on that?
>

I played with the bash syntax for a little bit, and  I came up with the 
following one-liner that should print out all the executable files a package 
installed on your system.  The basic syntax is:

$ PACKAGE=speedcrunch
$ dpkg -L "$PACKAGE" | xargs -n 1 | { while read FNAME; do if [ ! -d 
"$FNAME" ]; then if [ -x "$FNAME" ]; then echo "$FNAME"; fi; fi; done; }

If you save that in a script in your path somewhere, it could be useful for 
finding executable names.

Carl W.