calc82: Devlog #9 31/08/2026

calc82: because calculators are for everyone

This devlog follows the addition of menus and the status bar to my calculator.

🌟 New functionality summary

• Extensible menu system that allows for easy creation of paginated and nested menus
• Status bar with indicators that change based on the current calculator state
• M+ and M- special variables
• Mixed fraction display

📋 Menu system

The menu system uses a dictionary to encode the menu pages and their entries, making it easy to add new menus. However, I couldn’t find a way to easily encode functions and arguments in this structure, so the actual actions are handled by a big switch statement. When the menu is active, most buttons have no action and the input/output display is hidden.

🧀 Status bar

The status bar consists of a row of elements with adjustable opacity (to represent their active state). It is handled by a class which allows items to be toggled with a single method call, meaning it can retroactively be integrated into other components.

The original calculator has some menu elements that can never be activated - for example, there is a complex mode indicator, but the calculator cannot show complex numbers. I omitted these on calc82, as they took up unnecessary space.

📈 Next steps

The project is almost nearing completion :) I made complete list of every feature missing from the calculator (too long to post here). It should should get shorter every devlog from now! Hopefully I can finally ship this project in the next couple of weeks.

Thanks for reading :)