# Design: Tally - Cross-Platform Calculator ## References - #[[file:.kiro/specs/calculator/requirements.md]] --- ## 1. System Architecture ``` +-------------------------------------------------------------+ | Frontends | +-------------+------------------+----------------------------+ | CLI | TUI | Android | | (Zig) | (Zig+libvaxis) | (Kotlin/Compose) | +------+------+--------+---------+------------+---------------+ | | | | Zig import | Zig import | JNI (C ABI, not built yet) | | | +------v---------------v----------------------v---------------+ | Engine (Zig library) | +-------------------------------------------------------------+ | Parser.zig | evaluator.zig | programmer.zig units.zig | | tokenizer | financial.zig | bitwise.zig float_interp| | ast.zig | number/Rational/Integer grouping.zig| +-------------------------------------------------------------+ ``` The engine is a pure Zig library with no I/O. Frontends depend on the engine; the engine depends on nothing outside `std`. The CLI and TUI ship today; the Android column is a plan, and `c_api.zig` is the seam it will use (section 6). ### Build Graph One `build.zig` at the workspace root. The per-frontend build files this section used to describe (`engine/build.zig`, `cli/build.zig`, `tui/build.zig`) were never written: the engine is one import the two frontends share, and splitting the build would buy nothing. ``` build.zig |- import "engine" <- engine/src/engine.zig, shared by both frontends |- exe "tally" <- src/main.zig (CLI + TUI in one binary) |- lib "tally" <- static and shared libraries from engine/src/engine.zig |- step "test" <- three test binaries: engine, CLI, TUI |- step "coverage" <- kcov over the same three, one report each (build/Coverage.zig, kcov downloaded on first use) |- step "run" <- runs the binary ``` **Build system philosophy:** - `zig build` is the single entry point for all compilation. No Makefile, no CMake, no shell scripts. - `zig build` (no args) -> builds the engine libraries and the `tally` binary for the host. - `zig build test` -> runs every test in the three trees. - `zig build coverage -Dcoverage-threshold=N` -> the same tests under kcov, failing below the threshold. - Android cross-compilation (`-Dtarget=aarch64-linux-android`) is not wired up yet. When it is, the `android/` Gradle project will handle only APK packaging and Compose UI compilation; it will not invoke Zig. **Toolchain management (mise):** - `.mise.toml` at project root declares: Zig version, any other needed tools. - `mise install` provisions the full dev environment. No other manual setup required. - CI uses the same `.mise.toml` for reproducibility. **Toolchain management (mise):** - `.mise.toml` at project root declares: Zig version, any other needed tools. - `mise install` provisions the full dev environment. No other manual setup required. - CI uses the same `.mise.toml` for reproducibility. --- ## 2. Engine Design ### 2.1 File Breakdown | File | Responsibility | |--------|---------------| | `grouping.zig` | The thousands rule, shared by both display paths | | `Integer.zig` | A fixed-width integer (file-as-struct): `raw`, `width`, `signedness`, the interpretations, and the notations it renders in | | `Rational.zig` | Exact rationals over big integers (file-as-struct) | | `number.zig` | The exact/inexact numeric model (section 2.7), including how a value renders itself at a budget the caller supplies. Lowercase: `Number` is a tagged union, which a file-as-struct cannot express | | `tokenizer.zig` | Lexer, and `Base` for literals | | `ast.zig` | AST node definitions | | `Parser.zig` | Pratt parser -> AST (file-as-struct) | | `evaluator.zig` | Walk AST, produce results | | `bitwise.zig` | The fixed-width operators (`& \| xor ~ << >> >>> rol ror`), shared by both modes | | `programmer.zig` | Programmer-mode evaluation, its `Config`, wrapping arithmetic | | `float_interp.zig` | IEEE 754 bit-level interpretation | | `units.zig` | Unit conversion tables and resolver | | `financial.zig` | CAGR, TVM, compound interest, amortization, and money display (cents are a property of money, not of a screen) | | `message.zig` | Gone: the wording lives in `engine.zig` beside the `Error` union it words | | `engine.zig` | Public API surface (Zig-native): the seven files a frontend imports, nine name aliases, the derived `Error` union, and `phrase` | | `c_api.zig` | `extern "C"` seam for JNI/FFI consumers. Two of its three exports are stubs; see section 6 | Every file declares its own error set; there is no shared one (section 10). There is deliberately no `types.zig` and no `errors.zig`. `types.zig` existed, and being named after a language feature rather than a concept, it accumulated four unrelated groups: the error vocabulary, the fixed-width integer model, `Base` (used only by the lexer and the AST), and `Mode` (which the engine stored and never read). `errors.zig` was where the error vocabulary landed, until the same question showed that what needed splitting was the type inside it. Each piece has gone to the file that owns it. `struct_layout.zig` does not exist; section 3 is a design, not a description. A file is named TitleCase when the file *is* the type, with its fields at container level: `Integer.zig`, `Rational.zig` and `Parser.zig`. `number.zig` stays lowercase because `Number` is a tagged union and a Zig file is always a struct, so the file cannot be that type without wrapping the union in a field, which would add a hop at every use of the tag that is the type's whole identity. `tokenizer.zig` stays lowercase for a different reason: `Base`, `TokenKind` and `Token` are the lexer's vocabulary rather than parts of `Tokenizer`, and `Base` in particular is used by the AST and both evaluators without a tokenizer anywhere in sight. ### 2.2 Core Data Types The result of every calculation is a `Number`: two tiers, one type (section 2.7). ```zig /// number.zig pub const Number = union(enum) { exact: Rational, inexact: f64, }; /// Integer.zig, the fixed-width value programmer mode computes on. The file IS the /// type, so these are container-level fields. raw: u128, // two's complement bit pattern, may carry bits above the width width: BitWidth = .bits64, signedness: Signedness = .signed, pub const BitWidth = enum(u8) { bits8 = 8, bits16 = 16, bits32 = 32, bits64 = 64, bits128 = 128 }; pub const Signedness = enum { signed, unsigned }; ``` An earlier version of this section described a `Value` union with `integer`, `float`, `boolean`, `struct_layout` and `multi_base` members, and a `MultiBaseResult` carrying five preformatted strings and a `[64]u1` bit array. None of it was built, and the reasons are worth keeping: - **`Value` was never the result type.** The exact tier needs one type that can be either exact or inexact and can move between the two, which is what `Number` is. A union with a `boolean` member also promised comparisons the language does not have. - **`MultiBaseResult` was a frontend's job.** A result does not need to carry five renderings of itself: `Integer.fmt(.hex, .{})` renders on demand, at the width and byte order the caller asks for, and the bit grid reads the bits it needs from `raw`. Precomputing all five meant deciding separator style and grouping inside the engine, which is exactly the decision NFR-9.9 puts in the frontend. - **`raw` is a `u128`, not a `u64`.** 128-bit width is supported, so the pattern needs the width to match; `bit_width` is spelled `width` because the file is already `Integer`. ### 2.3 AST Nodes The shape as implemented (`engine/src/ast.zig`); the earlier sketch here omitted the `text` field, which the whole exact tier depends on. ```zig pub const Expr = union(enum) { number: Number, string_literal: []const u8, // ASCII bytes to pack, quotes stripped unary: Unary, binary: Binary, call: Call, variable: []const u8, assignment: Assignment, }; pub const Number = struct { base: Base, /// The literal exactly as written, pointing into the source. The only /// representation kept, because it is the only lossless one: each reader parses /// it at the precision it works in (`Number.parse` for the exact tier, /// `Base.parseDigits` for a fixed-width pattern). This node used to carry an /// `f64` and a `?u64` computed up front, which capped a literal at 128 /// characters and 64 bits; see Task 5.18. text: []const u8, }; pub const Base = enum { decimal, hex, octal, binary, /// The literal's digits as a value, separators skipped, `Overflow` past u128. pub fn parseDigits(self: Base, text: []const u8) error{Overflow}!u128 { ... } }; pub const Binary = struct { op: BinaryOp, left: *Expr, right: *Expr, }; pub const BinaryOp = enum { add, sub, mul, div, mod, pow, bit_and, bit_or, bit_xor, shift_left, shift_right, shift_right_logical, rotate_left, rotate_right, }; ``` Ownership: nodes are allocated individually and the caller releases the tree with `parser.freeExpr`. Passing an arena and skipping the walk is allowed, but nothing assumes it (see `ast.zig` for why that distinction matters). **Size limits.** `Parser.max_nodes` (1000) and `Parser.max_nest_depth` (128) bound the tree, because every walk over it recurses. A flat chain like `1+1+1+...` builds a left-deep tree whose depth is the operator count, and 4000 terms segfaulted `evalExact` before the limit existed. Exceeding either reports `ExpressionTooLarge` or `NestingTooDeep`, so the message says which. ### 2.4 Parser Design **Approach: Pratt parser (top-down operator precedence)** Precedence table (low -> high): | Level | Operators | |-------|-----------| | 1 | `\|` (OR), `or` | | 2 | `xor` (XOR keyword) | | 3 | `&` (AND), `and` | | 4 | `<<`, `>>`, `>>>`, `rol`, `ror` | | 5 | `+`, `-` | | 6 | `*`, `/`, `%` | | 7 | `^`, `**` (exponentiation, always) | | 8 | Unary `-`, `~` (NOT), `not` | | 9 | Function calls, parentheses | **`^` is always exponentiation.** There is no mode-dependent operator overloading. XOR is a keyword (`xor`), consistent with the existing `rol`/`ror` keyword operators. Bitwise ops have both symbolic and keyword forms: `&`/`and`, `|`/`or`, `~`/`not`. XOR is keyword-only (`xor`) since `^` is reserved for power. Every operator means the same thing in standard and programmer modes. **The table above is one declaration in the code.** `parser.infix_table` lists each infix operator once as `{ trigger, op, prec, assoc }`, where the trigger is either a token kind or a keyword's text. It replaced four switches that had to agree pairwise plus an inline special case for right-associativity; see Task 5.19. Both spellings of power associate to the right (`2^3^2` is `2^(3^2)`), everything else to the left. **Assignment is a statement, not an operator.** `name = expr` is recognised at the top of an input, not in prefix position, so it cannot appear where an operand can. It has a precedence level in the table above for documentation only: nothing returns it. **One implementation of the fixed-width operators.** `bitwise.zig` implements the eight fixed-width binary operators plus `~` and two's complement negation, over `Integer` values that carry their own width and signedness. There is no separate domain parameter: an operand is a pattern and the type to read it as, together, so an operation cannot be handed a pattern from one width and a type from another. Standard mode uses the `Integer` default, 64-bit signed and not configurable (FR-2.3); programmer mode uses its configured width and signedness. `apply` asserts both operands are the same type and returns a value of the left operand's type. The operators this tier owns are named by `bitwise.Op`, a narrower enum than `ast.BinaryOp`, with `fromBinaryOp` mapping between them and returning null for the arithmetic operators, which are rational in standard mode and wrapping in programmer mode and so have nothing to share. Both callers dispatch through an `inline else` prong that resolves the operator at comptime, so an operator added to `BinaryOp` that belongs in this tier fails to compile rather than falling through to the rational tier. FR-2.13 covers the distance rules: shifts run to completion, rotations are cyclic, negative distances are domain errors. **No implicit multiplication**: adjacency (e.g. `2pi`) is an error; use explicit `*`. Spaces within hex/oct/bin literals are separators (e.g. `0xFF FF`). **Parsing does not depend on the mode.** `Tokenizer.init(source)` and `Parser.init(allocator, source)` take no `Mode`: the same text produces the same tree in standard and programmer mode, and only evaluation differs. Both used to accept and store a `Mode` that no code read, which implied a mode-dependent grammar that does not exist. ### 2.5 Evaluation The evaluator maintains an `Environment`: ```zig pub const Environment = struct { allocator: Allocator, /// Variables hold `Number`, so an assignment keeps whatever exactness its /// expression had: `X = 0.1` stores exactly one tenth. variables: std.StringHashMap(Number), ans: Number, }; ``` It holds no mode and no programmer configuration. It used to hold both and read neither: the caller picks `evalString` or `evalProgrammerString`, so which evaluator runs is decided at the call rather than by state. The TUI was writing a mode into that field on every mode change and nothing ever consulted it. `Mode` has left the engine entirely; each frontend has its own, and they differ (the CLI has two, the TUI has four including Convert, and the engine had a `financial` member it could never act on because financial calculations are ordinary functions in expressions). Programmer mode's configuration belongs to programmer mode: ```zig // programmer.zig pub const Config = struct { width: BitWidth = .bits64, signedness: Signedness = .signed, /// Big-endian by default so the HEX row reads as the number itself; see FR-2.8. display_endian: std.builtin.Endian = .big, }; // Integer.zig: the file is the type raw: u128, width: BitWidth = .bits64, signedness: Signedness = .signed, ``` `Integer.zig` is TitleCase because the file is the type. Width and signedness were briefly a nested `IntType` struct, which existed only because `bitwise.zig` operated on bare `u128` patterns and needed the pair passed alongside. Now that the operators take values (`apply(op, left: Integer, right: Integer)`), nothing carries the pair without bits to go with it, so the fields sit directly on the value and `Config` holds them flat. That also removed a class of mistake: a pattern can no longer be operated on at a width it did not come from. Byte order is `std.builtin.Endian` rather than an engine enum of the same two members. Standard mode evaluates to `Number`, the exact/inexact union of section 2.7. Programmer mode evaluates to `Integer`, which is a `u128` pattern plus the width and signedness that interpret it (the nested `IntType` this used to name is gone; the fields sit on `Integer` itself). ### 2.6 Number Display Formatting The engine provides values that can render themselves at a budget the caller supplies; frontends decide the budget (NFR-9.9) and the sink. There is no separate formatter: `Number.render` and `Integer.fmt` are methods on the values, and both go through `grouping.zig` for the thousands rule so every surface groups digits identically (NFR-7). A `formatter.zig` held this once and was dismantled, because it had become a second place where display decisions lived. #### Decimal Formatting | Context | Display | Clipboard | |---------|---------|-----------| | Standard result | `4,294,967,295` | `4294967295` | | Fractional result | `231,677.04` | `231677.04` | | Financial result | `$1,234,567.89` | `1234567.89` | | Large decimals | `4,294,967,295` (never scientific unless > 15 digits of precision) | `4294967295` | **Grouping applies to the integer part regardless of a fractional part.** Commas group the digits left of the decimal point and never appear to the right of it, so `231677.04` displays as `231,677.04` rather than ungrouped. Grouping only whole numbers would make the same magnitude read two different ways depending on whether cents happened to be present, which showed up immediately in financial output. Because FR-1.8 accepts commas as input digit separators, the grouped display remains valid input. Text already in scientific notation is left alone. **Scientific notation threshold**: Only use scientific notation when the number exceeds what can be meaningfully displayed in decimal (> 15 significant digits, or absolute value > 10^15 or < 10^-15). Otherwise, always show full decimal with commas. This is a deliberate departure from calculators that jump to scientific notation at 10+ digits. #### Programmer Mode Formatting Values are displayed with visual grouping separators to aid readability, but clipboard copies the raw value without separators. | Base | Display (value view) | Display (memory view) | Clipboard | |------|---------------------|----------------------|-----------| | Hex | `FF FF FF FF` | `FF FF FF FF` | `0xFFFFFFFF` | | Bin | `1111 1111 1111 1111 1111 1111 1111 1111` | same | `0b11111111111111111111111111111111` | | Oct | `0o37_777_777_777` | - | `0o37777777777` | | Dec | `4,294,967,295` | - | `4294967295` | Rationale for hex grouping: - **Display uses space per byte** (`FF FF FF FF`): matches hex editors, debuggers, `xxd` output. Consistent with binary's nibble-space grouping. Universally readable. - These are two different views of the same data: the *value* (what you'd write in source code) vs. the *memory* (how it sits in RAM). For this calculator, both use the same space-separated format. Binary always groups by nibble (4 bits) with spaces - universally expected by programmers. #### Formatting Data Structure ```zig pub const FormattedValue = struct { /// Human-readable display string (with commas, underscores, spaces) display: []const u8, /// Machine/clipboard string (raw, no separators, includes prefix) raw: []const u8, }; ``` All frontends: - Show `display` in the UI - Copy `raw` to clipboard on long-press (Android) or yank (TUI) --- ### 2.7 Numeric Model: Exact and Inexact #### 2.7.1 The problem Standard mode currently evaluates everything as `f64`. That produces four distinct classes of wrong answer, all reproducible today: ``` 0.1 + 0.2 -> 0.30000000000000004 binary cannot represent 0.1 1.1 + 2.2 -> 3.3000000000000003 same 9007199254740993 -> 9.007199254740992e15 SILENTLY A DIFFERENT INTEGER 2^53 + 1 -> 9.007199254740992e15 same, past f64's integer limit 12 in in ft -> 0.9999999999999998 conversion factors are decimal factorial(171) -> error: unknown function f64 overflow, wrong error too ``` The third case is the serious one. The user typed an exact integer and got a different integer back. Meanwhile programmer mode, one Tab away, is exact to 128 bits. That is an internal inconsistency, not a rounding preference. #### 2.7.2 The representation A tagged number with an exact tier and an inexact tier: ```zig /// Exact rational: p/q with arbitrary-size integers, always reduced, q > 0. pub const Rational = struct { num: std.math.big.int.Managed, den: std.math.big.int.Managed, }; pub const Number = union(enum) { /// Exact value. Closed under + - * / and integer powers. exact: Rational, /// Inexact value, produced once a computation escapes the rationals. inexact: f64, }; ``` **Contagion rule:** any operation with an `inexact` operand yields `inexact`. A value never silently becomes exact again. This is what keeps the guarantee honest: `exact` means "no rounding has occurred anywhere in this value's history", not "happens to look clean right now". #### 2.7.3 Why rational and not decimal128 Both fix `0.1 + 0.2`. They are not otherwise equivalent: | | decimal128 | arbitrary rational | |---|---|---| | Form | +/- 34-digit significand x 10^exp, 128 bits fixed | p/q, arbitrary-size integers | | `0.1`, `0.0254` | exact | exact (`1/10`, `127/5000`) | | `1/3` | 34-digit approximation | **exact** | | `(1/3)*3` | `0.999...9` | **exactly 1** | | `9007199254740993` | exact | exact | | `sqrt(2)`, `pi` | approximation | **cannot represent** | | Rounds | every operation | never | | Memory | fixed 16 bytes | grows with denominators | | Trailing zeros (`2.50`) | **preserved** (scale is part of the value) | lost | Two conclusions: 1. **Every decimal128 value is a rational.** Rationals strictly subsume them. What decimal128 adds is fixed cost, standard rounding modes, and scale semantics, not additional expressiveness. 2. **decimal128 does not deliver correctness, it delivers familiarity.** `1/3 * 3` is still not 1. Since we are prioritizing correctness, rational wins outright. Decimal's genuine advantage is scale preservation, which matters for money (`2.50`, not `2.5`). We recover that in financial mode with an explicit display scale plus banker's rounding at the commit boundary, rather than a second numeric type. See section 5. #### 2.7.4 The exact/inexact boundary The trigger is **whether the operation escapes the rationals**, evaluated per call rather than per function. Notably it is *not* the input base: `0xdeadbeef` is exactly 3735928559, and base is a lexical and display property only. | Stays exact | Becomes inexact | |---|---| | `+ - * /` on exact operands | `sin cos tan asin acos atan` | | `^` with integer exponent | `^` with non-integer exponent | | `sqrt` of a perfect square | `sqrt` of a non-square | | `%`, `abs`, `ceil`, `floor`, `round` | `log ln log2 log10 exp cbrt` | | `factorial` (unbounded) | constants `pi`, `e`, `tau` | | integer and decimal literals | any operand already inexact | `sqrt(4)` is 2 exactly; `sqrt(2)` is not. We deliberately stop short of a CAS: Qalculate simplifies `sqrt(8)` to `2*sqrt(2)` symbolically, we will not. #### 2.7.5 Denominator growth and the demotion policy Rationals grow. Chained division with coprime denominators multiplies them, so a pathological input can consume unbounded memory. This must be designed in from the start, not discovered later: - Cap the denominator at a bit-width budget (starting proposal: 4096 bits). - On exceeding it, **demote to `inexact`** rather than erroring or growing. - Demotion is silent in the result value but visible in the tag, so a frontend can indicate that exactness was lost. Interactive single calculations will not approach this. The cap exists so the failure mode is graceful degradation to today's behavior. #### 2.7.6 Display Exact values still have to be rendered at finite width, so display precision remains a separate decision from compute precision: - An exact value with a **terminating** decimal expansion prints exactly: `1/10` -> `0.1`, and `12 in in ft` -> `1`. - An exact value with a **non-terminating** expansion is rendered by long division to a digit budget with correct rounding, and marked as approximate: `100 km in mi` is exactly `781250/12573`, displayed as `62.137119224`. - Because the exact form is retained, we can additionally offer the fraction (`781250/12573`) as a display option. This is a feature, not a workaround. This supersedes the unimplemented "exceeds 15 significant digits" clause of NFR-7, which was never a precision decision and, read literally, would have rendered `0.9999999999999998` as `9.999999999999998e-1`. NFR-7 needs a real answer to a better-posed question: how many digits to show for a non-terminating exact value. #### 2.7.7 What is unaffected - **Programmer mode** stays fixed-width `u128`. Wrapping and masking at a chosen bit width is the entire point of that mode; exact arithmetic would break it. - **The IEEE 754 float view** stays binary `f32`/`f64`. It exists to show binary encodings. - **The f64 rendering paths** remain, since the inexact tier still needs them. #### 2.7.8 Fallback precision: why f64 and not f128 The obvious objection to `f64` for the inexact tier is that the usual justification (hardware instructions) does not apply to a calculator, which evaluates one expression per human action. That objection is correct, and performance is *not* the reason. The reason is that Zig 0.16's f128 support is partial and, worse, silently inconsistent. Probed directly: | Operation | f128 status | |---|---| | `@sqrt` | compiles, accurate to full f128 (34 digits verified) | | `@sin`, `@cos` | compiles, accurate to full f128 | | `@log`, `@log10`, `@exp` | compiles, but **only f64-accurate** | | `std.math.pow` | **does not compile** ("pow not implemented for f128") | | `std.math.cbrt` | **does not compile** | | `std.math.atan`, `asin` | compiles | | `parseFloat` / formatting | works, 112 mantissa bits (~34 decimal digits) | The middle row is the disqualifying one. `@log(2.0)` as f128 returns `0.6931471805599452862267639829951804`, which is the *f64* value widened: it diverges from the true value at the 17th significant digit. So f128 storage would hand us 34 digits of which roughly 18 are noise, with nothing to distinguish them. For a calculator that then displays those digits, this is actively worse than knowingly using f64. The general principle: **the precision of the inexact tier is bounded by the accuracy of the underlying transcendental implementations, not by the width of the storage type.** Widening storage without widening the algorithms buys nothing but false confidence. ##### Upstream status (checked, not assumed) The f64-accuracy above is not a misconfiguration or a version quirk. It is visible in Zig's own source, with its own TODO markers. `lib/compiler_rt/log.zig`: ```zig pub fn logq(a: f128) callconv(.c) f128 { // TODO: more correct implementation return log(@floatCast(a)); } ``` A systematic scan of `lib/compiler_rt/` in Zig 0.16.0 splits the f128 routines cleanly in two: - **Downcast to f64, all five marked TODO:** `expq`, `exp2q`, `logq`, `log2q`, `log10q` - **Genuine f128 implementations:** `sinq`, `cosq`, `tanq`, `sqrtq`, `fabsq`, `floorq`, `ceilq`, `roundq`, `truncq` That is an exact match for the probe results: `@sin`/`@cos`/`@sqrt` accurate, `@log`/`@log10`/`@exp` only f64-accurate. Tracker status, as of this writing. Note that Zig has moved to Codeberg and GitHub is effectively frozen (GitHub last pushed 2025-11-27; Codeberg shows ~742 open issues against GitHub's ~2876, so most GitHub issues were **not** migrated): | Gap | Tracked? | |---|---| | `std.math.pow` f128 | [GH #23602](https://github.com/ziglang/zig/issues/23602) open, labeled "contributor friendly". [PR #23631](https://github.com/ziglang/zig/pull/23631) implemented it but was **closed unmerged** 2026-01-05 ("no CI on GitHub anymore... reopen on Codeberg"). Nobody has. No Codeberg issue exists. | | `std.math.cbrt` f128 | **No issue on either tracker.** Unreported. `cbrt.zig` is ported from musl, which only ships `cbrtf`/`cbrt`. | | `logq`/`expq` etc. f64 accuracy | **No issue on either tracker.** Only the in-source TODOs. | The nearest historical artifacts are [GH #4026](https://github.com/ziglang/zig/issues/4026) ("implement all the math functions for all the floating point types", closed 2022-12-28 under milestone 0.11.0 with its f128 column still unchecked) and [GH #15711](https://github.com/ziglang/zig/issues/15711) (a reference table created and closed in the same second, which lists the f128 symbols as *existing* - existence, not accuracy). Adjacent open work suggesting f128 remains a soft spot generally: [GH #23865](https://github.com/ziglang/zig/pull/23865) "Better @sqrt for f32, f64 and f128", [GH #23173](https://github.com/ziglang/zig/issues/23173) "introduce new float types", and Codeberg #36093 "compiler_rt: min(f128) / max(f128) causes integer overflow". **Conclusion: "wait for Zig to fix f128" is not a plan.** Two of the three gaps are not even reported, and the one with a working patch lost it to a tracker migration. Obtaining true f128 accuracy would mean writing or porting the routines ourselves, which is the same category and scale of work as going arbitrary-precision - so it should be justified on its own terms, not smuggled in as "just use a wider type". (Optional, off the critical path: reviving the `pow` PR on Codeberg is a well-scoped upstream contribution, and the issue is explicitly labeled contributor friendly.) So `f64` is chosen because ~15-16 digits is the precision we can actually justify, and we display no more than that. The upgrade path is therefore *not* "switch the storage type to f128"; it is "implement or bind correctly-rounded arbitrary-precision transcendentals" (the problem MPFR exists to solve), which is a separate project with its own justification. Incidentally, the probe also confirms that width alone never fixes the decimal problem: in f128, `0.1 + 0.2` is `0.30000000000000000000000000000000004`. Only exactness fixes it. #### 2.7.9 Implementation sequencing The change must not land as one diff mixing structural churn (signature changes rippling through hundreds of test assertions) with behavioral change (results becoming correct). Reviewing that combination is impractical: the interesting lines are buried in mechanical ones. Two orderings were considered. **Rejected: structure first.** Introduce `Number`, rewrite every test and the display path to consume it, review, then change behavior. This fails because the structural rewrite is not behavior-neutral: rewriting a test to consume `Number` requires asserting whether each result is `exact` or `inexact`, and that classification *is* the behavioral design. Every such assertion would be written against the old f64 behavior and then flipped in the later step. Double churn, and the intermediate commit is a large diff that improves nothing. **Chosen: behavior first, behind the existing signature.** 1. **Add `rational.zig` and `number.zig`, wired to nothing.** Pure addition with their own tests. Reviewable in isolation, zero risk to existing behavior. 2. **Switch the evaluator's internals to the exact tier, keeping `evalString` returning `f64`.** All existing tests must still pass. Review and commit. 3. **Change `evalString` and the display path to return and consume `Number`**, with the resulting mechanical churn in test signatures. Review and commit. 4. **Add the exactness tests** that only the `Number` API can express. What makes step 2 worthwhile rather than invisible is that converting an exact value to `f64` *once, at the boundary* already fixes most of the payoff. Today's errors are accumulated: `0.1` and `0.2` are each rounded before being added. An exact `3/10` rounded a single time to the nearest f64 prints as `0.3`. Bug-by-bug, where the fix lands: | Bug | Fixed by step 2 (f64 boundary) | Needs step 3 (`Number`) | |---|---|---| | `0.1 + 0.2` -> `0.3` | yes | - | | `1.1 + 2.2` -> `3.3` | yes | - | | `0.1 * 3` -> `0.3` | yes | - | | `1e20 + 1 - 1e20` -> `1` | yes | - | | `factorial(171)` | partly (becomes `inf`, not an error) | yes, for the exact value | | `9007199254740993` | **no** (f64 cannot hold it) | yes | | `2^53 + 1` | **no** | yes | | `1/3` retained exactly | no (only observable as exact) | yes | | `12 in in ft` -> `1` | **no** - see below | needs exact unit factors | **Unit conversion is a separate problem from the evaluator.** An earlier draft of this table claimed the exact evaluator would fix `12 in in ft`. It does not, and the reason is worth recording: `UnitDef.to_base_factor` is an `f64`, so `0.0254` is *already* the binary approximation before any arithmetic happens, and `convertUnits` does its own f64 multiply and divide without ever touching the evaluator. Making conversions exact requires the factors themselves to be exact (declared as decimal text and parsed into rationals), which is a mechanical change across ~100 table entries and belongs in its own commit. Tracked as Task 2.0e. So step 2 is independently verifiable through the current API, and the large-integer cases become the motivating tests for step 3 rather than speculative ones. #### 2.7.10 Migration and test impact The dominant risk is **compile-time** breakage, not behavioral. An audit of the 402-test suite found **no test that asserts the broken behavior** - nothing pins `0.30000000000000004`, the 2^53 cliff, or the `factorial` limit. So the target is "no test changes its expected value", not "no test file is touched". Unaffected by construction: `programmer.zig` (47), `float_interp.zig` (21), `formatter.zig` (40), `types.zig` and `tui.zig` (16). Kept passing by making the change additive: - `tokenizer.zig` (39): `NumberValue` **gains** an exact field, does not replace `float`/`int_value`. - `parser.zig` (32, 10 of which read `number.float_value`): the AST number node likewise gains a field. - `evaluator.zig` (62, 40 asserting `@as(f64, ...)`): keep `evalString` returning `f64` as a wrapper over the exact core. Every one of those assertions involves small values where exact-to-f64 is bit-identical. - `units.zig` (106, 95 routed through the `expectConvert` helper): change the helper once, leave the call sites alone. Three existing items must change because we are invalidating their premise: 1. `tokenizer.zig` test `"parseNumber huge decimal falls back to float"` - `99999999999999999999999999` becomes exactly representable, so the test still passes but its intent is now false. Rewrite it. 2. `Number.renderInexact`'s 2^53 bound (then `formatter.zig`'s `is_integer`) - that guard is the display half of the `9007199254740993` bug. 3. `evaluator.zig` `factorial`'s `x > 170` rejection, which is also the source of the misleading `unknown function` error. **Compatibility wrappers are scaffolding with a deadline, not an end state.** If the CLI and TUI keep calling the `f64` API, the exactness never reaches the user and the work is invisible. The display path must move to `Number` (step 3 of 2.7.9), and that is where `main.zig`'s ~20 output assertions get reviewed. Literal zero test churn across the whole sequence would be evidence we had not delivered anything. Windows Calculator draws the same exact/inexact line we are drawing: its arbitrary-precision rational engine covers basic arithmetic only, not transcendentals. New tests required: rational arithmetic and reduction, exact/inexact contagion, the demotion policy at the denominator cap, rational-to-decimal rendering and rounding, and a regression test per bug in 2.7.1 - including one asserting `9007199254740993` round-trips, which nothing currently guards. ##### Allocation-failure testing `errdefer` cleanup paths are not reachable by ordinary tests, and covering them is worthless on its own: the line exists to *prevent a leak*, so executing it proves nothing unless the test also asserts that nothing leaked. `std.testing.FailingAllocator` fails after exactly N allocations. Sweeping N across an operation's whole allocation sequence, with `testing.allocator` underneath to detect leaks at test end, turns those paths into real assertions. (`std.mem.Allocator.failing` fails on the *first* allocation, which only covers entry-point OOM, not the interesting mid-construction failures.) This is not a coverage exercise; the sweep immediately found three genuine bugs in `rational.zig` that ordinary tests could never reach: 1. **A double free.** `initOwned` took its numerator and denominator *by value* and freed them via `errdefer` on its own failure, while every caller ALSO had an `errdefer` for the same values. Any allocation failure inside normalization freed them twice, which segfaulted. 2. **A dangling copy.** Because the parts were passed by value, and normalization can reallocate limbs, a caller's `errdefer` could free a stale pointer even without the double free. Fixed by renaming to `finish` and taking both parts **by pointer**, with the contract that ownership transfers only on success: on failure the caller's `errdefer` sees live, current values and frees them exactly once. 3. **Two struct-literal leaks.** `initInt`, `initZero` and `initRatio` built `.{ .num = try initSet(...), .den = try initSet(...) }` in a single literal. An `errdefer` cannot cover a value that does not exist yet, so a failure on the second allocation orphaned the first. Fixed by building the parts as separate statements, each with its own `errdefer`. `floor` and `factorial` were also missing an `errdefer` on their denominator. The remaining uncovered lines in these files are `unreachable` arms guarded upstream, and diagnostic paths inside the tests themselves. --- ## 3. Struct Layout Engine (DESIGN ONLY, NOT BUILT) Nothing in this section exists. There is no `struct_layout.zig`, no ABI profile interface, no `tally struct` subcommand and no struct sub-view in the TUI, and the four errors this design needs (`InvalidType`, `InvalidFieldName`, `DuplicateFieldName`, `StructTooLarge`) were deleted from the engine because nothing could produce them. The feature is wanted (FR-3) and is sequenced after the Android app. The design is kept because it is the one part of the plan with a grammar and an algorithm worked out in advance, and because the shape below is still what we would build. Read what follows as a proposal. ### 3.1 Mini-DSL Grammar ``` struct_def := "struct" "{" field_list "}" field_list := (field ";")* field := type_name identifier type_name := "u8" | "u16" | "u32" | "u64" | "i8" | "i16" | "i32" | "i64" | "f32" | "f64" | "bool" | "ptr" | "[" number "]" type_name // arrays identifier := [a-zA-Z_][a-zA-Z0-9_]* ``` ### 3.2 ABI Profile Interface ```zig pub const AbiProfile = struct { name: []const u8, pointer_size: u8, // bytes max_alignment: u8, // maximum alignment enforced /// Given a field type, return its (size, alignment) in bytes field_layout: *const fn (field_type: FieldType) -> struct { size: u8, alignment: u8 }, /// Struct-level alignment (usually max of all field alignments) struct_alignment: *const fn (fields: []const FieldInfo) -> u8, /// Whether tail padding is added to round up to struct alignment tail_padding: bool, }; // Built-in profiles pub const x86_64_sysv = AbiProfile{ ... }; // default pub const x86_64_win64 = AbiProfile{ ... }; // future pub const packed = AbiProfile{ ... }; // no padding ``` ### 3.3 Layout Computation Algorithm ``` function compute_layout(fields, abi): offset = 0 struct_align = 1 result_fields = [] for each field in fields: (size, align) = abi.field_layout(field.type) struct_align = max(struct_align, align) # Insert padding for alignment padding = (align - (offset % align)) % align if padding > 0: emit_padding(offset, padding) offset += padding # Place field emit_field(field.name, field.type, offset, size) offset += size # Tail padding if abi.tail_padding: tail = (struct_align - (offset % struct_align)) % struct_align if tail > 0: emit_padding(offset, tail) offset += tail return StructLayout { total_size: offset, alignment: struct_align, fields: result_fields, } ``` ### 3.4 Layout Result Structure ```zig pub const StructLayoutResult = struct { total_size: usize, alignment: u8, fields: []const LayoutField, bytes: []const ByteInfo, // byte-by-byte map for visualization abi_name: []const u8, }; pub const LayoutField = struct { name: []const u8, type_name: []const u8, offset: usize, size: usize, alignment: u8, padding_before: usize, }; pub const ByteInfo = union(enum) { field: struct { field_index: usize, byte_within_field: usize }, padding: struct { before_field_index: usize }, tail_padding: void, }; ``` --- ## 4. Unit Conversion Engine ### 4.1 Architecture Units are organized by category. Each category has a canonical base unit. All conversions go through the base unit (from -> base -> to), except temperature which uses formula-based conversion. ```zig pub const UnitCategory = enum { length, mass, temperature, time, digital_storage, speed, area, volume, energy, pressure, data_rate, angle, }; pub const UnitDef = struct { name: []const u8, // canonical name (e.g., "km") aliases: []const []const u8, // alternatives (e.g., "kilometer", "kilometers") category: UnitCategory, /// base = value * to_base_factor + to_base_offset /// DERIVED at comptime from the exact text below; never written by hand. to_base_factor: f64, to_base_offset: f64 = 0, /// The factor as exact text (decimal or `p/q`), or null when the factor is /// irrational and no exact form exists. factor_text: ?[]const u8 = null, offset_text: ?[]const u8 = null, pub fn toBase(self: UnitDef, value: f64) f64 { return value * self.to_base_factor + self.to_base_offset; } /// The reverse direction is DERIVED, not stored. pub fn fromBase(self: UnitDef, base: f64) f64 { return (base - self.to_base_offset) / self.to_base_factor; } }; ``` **Factors are declared as exact text; the f64 is derived.** Tables are written with `define(.length, &.{ .{ .name = "in", .factor = "0.0254" }, ... })`, and `define` computes the f64 fields at comptime. This is the same single-source-of- truth argument as `fromBase` below, applied one level up: an inch is exactly 127/5000 m, and if the exact and approximate forms were both hand-written they could disagree. Some factors need the `p/q` form because they have no terminating decimal expansion: Fahrenheit scales by exactly 5/9, a knot is exactly 1852/3600 m/s, a torr exactly 101325/760 Pa. A few units are defined in terms of pi (the angle units, and the parsec at 648000/pi au) and so have NO exact rational factor; those declare `approx_factor` instead and their conversions fall back to the inexact tier. **Only the to-base mapping is stored; the reverse is derived.** An earlier draft of this design gave each unit four fields (`to_base_factor`/`to_base_offset` plus `from_base_factor`/`from_base_offset`). That was changed because it lets a table entry describe a conversion that disagrees with its own inverse: nothing stops a typo in `from_base_factor` from making `km -> m -> km` lossy. Deriving `fromBase` by inverting `toBase` gives one source of truth per unit, halves the numbers a contributor has to get right, and makes round-trip correctness structural rather than something tests have to police. A unit test still round-trips every unit and every within-category unit pair as a guard against bad factors. ### 4.2 Conversion Resolution Unit names resolve through `findUnit(name)`, which searches every category's table by canonical name and alias: 1. An **exact, case-sensitive** match is tried first. This is what keeps case-distinguished units meaningful: `K` is Kelvin (not a "kilo" something), `B` is byte and `b` is bit, `Mb` is megabit and `MB` is megabyte, and `kB` (1000) never silently becomes `KiB` (1024). 2. Only if nothing matches exactly does a **case-insensitive** pass run, which is what makes forgiving input like `KM` or `Celsius` work. That pass must find **exactly one** unit. Where a fold reaches two units that the tables deliberately distinguish by case, the name is `AmbiguousUnit` rather than a guess: `Mbps` is megabits per second and `MBps` is megabytes per second, so `MBPS` is a factor of eight away from one of the two readings with no way to tell which was meant. Returning the first fold match is how `MBPS` silently became `Mbps`, and how `mB` became `MB`. Bits sit alongside bytes in `digital_storage` (`b`, `kb`, `Mb`, `Gb`, `Tb`, `Pb`), because the category's whole convention is that lowercase `b` is a bit and uppercase `B` a byte. Before they existed, `Mb` matched nothing exactly, fell through to the fold, and `100 Mb to MB` answered `100 MB`: a megabit-to-megabyte question returning an identity. A bit is an eighth of a byte, so every factor in the category is still exact. Conversion goes through the category base unit: `to.fromBase(from.toBase(value))`. Both units must be in the same category, or the result is `IncompatibleUnits`. An unrecognized name is `UnknownUnit`. A single multiplicative factor is reported alongside the result only when both units are linear (zero offset). Temperature conversions are affine, so no single factor describes them and the factor is reported as null. **Free-form conversion requests** (`units.parseRequest`) let conversion be plain expression input rather than a special subcommand, so `tally 32F in C` and typing `100 km to mi` in the TUI both work: - A standalone, whitespace-delimited, case-insensitive `to` or `in` is the trigger. This needs no unit-aware tokenizer, because neither word is otherwise an identifier in the grammar. - No separator means `parseRequest` returns null and the caller falls through to ordinary expression evaluation, so existing behavior is untouched. - **`in` is both a separator and the name for inches.** Candidate separators are therefore tried last-to-first, keeping the first reading that yields a valid conversion. In `5 in in cm` the later `in` is the separator; in `100 mm in in` the earlier one is, because only that reading resolves. `1 in in in` is a valid identity. `min` is untouched because a separator must be whitespace-delimited. - Backtracking also improves errors: if a candidate reading fails, the reason is remembered, so a committed-but-invalid request reports `UnknownUnit`/`IncompatibleUnits` instead of a confusing parse error. - The trailing unit is split off by trying the **longest** suffix first, so `100 km` yields `("100", km)` and not `("100 k", m)`, and no space is required (`32F`). A candidate must start at a **token boundary** (the preceding character may not be a letter), which is what stops the trailing `s` of `100 smoots` from being read as seconds. - The value portion is returned **unevaluated** as text, so `parseRequest` needs no dependency on the evaluator and callers can evaluate it in whatever environment they already have. This is why `2*3 kg to lb` works. NOT YET IMPLEMENTED: unit-qualified arithmetic (`5 kg + 3 lb`), which genuinely does need unit-aware tokenizing and evaluation. The planned approach: For expressions like `5 kg + 3 lb`, the parser would: 1. Identify `5 kg` as a unit-qualified value 2. See `+ 3 lb` and convert `3 lb` to `kg` (left-hand unit wins) 3. Evaluate as `5 + 1.36078 = 6.36078 kg` ### 4.3 Adding New Units New units require only a table entry - no parser changes: ```zig // In units.zig const length_units = [_]UnitDef{ .{ .name = "m", .aliases = &.{"meter", "meters"}, .category = .length, .to_base_factor = 1.0 }, .{ .name = "km", .aliases = &.{"kilometer", "kilometers"}, .category = .length, .to_base_factor = 1000.0 }, .{ .name = "mi", .aliases = &.{"mile", "miles"}, .category = .length, .to_base_factor = 1609.344 }, // ... add new entries here }; ``` Invariants enforced by tests rather than convention: every category's base unit must have `to_base_factor == 1` and no offset, no unit may have a zero factor, canonical names must be unique across all categories, every unit must be listed in the table matching its own `category` field, and every unit and unit pair must round-trip. A bad table entry fails the suite instead of silently producing wrong answers. --- ## 5. Financial Module ### 5.1 CAGR ``` CAGR = (end_value / start_value) ^ (1 / periods) - 1 ``` ### 5.2 Compound Interest ``` FV = PV * (1 + rate/100/m)^(m * years) ``` Solvable for any of its four variables, all in closed form: ``` PV = FV / (1 + rate/100/m)^(m*years) rate = m * ((FV/PV)^(1/(m*years)) - 1) * 100 years = ln(FV/PV) / (m * ln(1 + rate/100/m)) ``` `m` (compounds per year) is deliberately NOT solvable. As `m` rises, FV climbs from the annual case toward the continuous limit `PV * e^(rate*years/100)`, so a solution exists only inside that band: for 10,000 at 6% over 10 years, only for future values between about 17,908 and 18,221. Nearly every real input has no answer, and a fractional answer ("compound 7.3 times a year") would be meaningless, so it stays an input with a prefilled default of 1. **Nominal versus effective.** `compoundRate` returns a NOMINAL annual rate: at `m = 12` it is the APR a lender quotes, not what the money earned. `effectiveAnnualRate` converts (18% nominal monthly is 19.56% effective), and the TUI shows both whenever `m > 1`. This only matters when solving, because a rate that was typed in is one the user already understands; a rate the calculator produces is one they are about to compare against something else. Solving for the rate at `m = 1` is exactly CAGR. Both entry points are kept: CAGR is a named thing people look for, and it takes periods rather than years so it works for quarters or months without a frequency argument. A test asserts the two agree, so they cannot drift. ### 5.3 TVM (Time Value of Money) The five TVM variables: N (periods), I/Y (interest rate per period), PV (present value), PMT (payment), FV (future value). Relationship: ``` PV * (1 + r)^N + PMT * [((1 + r)^N - 1) / r] + FV = 0 ``` where `r = I/Y / 100`. Solving for the unknown variable: - **FV, PV, PMT**: algebraic (closed-form) - **N**: logarithmic solution - **I/Y**: Newton-Raphson iterative solver (no closed form) Sign convention is the cash-flow one used by financial calculators: money received is positive, money paid out is negative. A borrower taking a 200,000 loan has `pv = 200000` and a negative `pmt`. The solver never flips signs on the caller's behalf, because a silent flip is harder to debug than a wrong-looking answer. The rate solver takes its derivative by central difference rather than analytically: the annuity-due form of the derivative is unwieldy and the numerical version is not the accuracy bottleneck. Two details make it reliable: 1. **Scale-relative acceptance.** The residual of the TVM equation is proportional to the size of the cash flows, so it is compared against `tolerance * max(|pv|, |fv|, |pmt| * n, 1)`. With an absolute tolerance a 200,000 mortgage cannot converge at all, because floating-point noise in the residual exceeds any fixed epsilon. 2. **Multiple seeds.** The residual can be flat or badly sloped near a poor initial guess, so the solver retries from a small set of starting rates (5%, 1%, 10%, 0.5%, 25%, -5%, 50%). A single seed fails on well-posed inputs. ### 5.4 Amortization An amortization schedule is generated period by period from the balance rather than from a closed form, because that is the only way the rounding matches what a lender's table shows. Each period: ``` interest = round(balance * r) principal = payment - interest balance = balance - principal ``` Rows are read from the borrower's side, so every figure is positive: `payment` is an amount paid, `balance` an amount owed. Mixing in the TVM sign convention only makes a table harder to read. Three behaviors are deliberate: - **The final period settles the balance exactly.** Cent rounding leaves a residue over hundreds of periods, so the last payment differs slightly from the rest. This is what real schedules do, and it is why the total of the principal column equals the loan amount to the cent. - **An overlarge payment retires the loan early**, and the schedule simply ends short of `periods`. - **An underfunded term ends in a balloon.** A payment that covers the interest but not the full term leaves a large final payment, which is shown rather than smoothed away. A payment that does not cover even the first period's interest never amortizes at all, so it is a domain error rather than an infinite loop. Single rows (`amortizationEntry`) and totals (`amortizationTotals`) walk the same cursor as the full schedule, so a row fetched on its own can never disagree with the same row inside a table. Only the full schedule allocates. ### 5.5 Reachability: expression functions, not just a mode Financial calculations are exposed as ordinary expression functions in standard mode, mirroring how unit conversion is reachable from a bare expression. That keeps them composable (`cagr(10000, 25000, 5) * 100`) and usable from the CLI without a subcommand per formula. See FR-5.7 for the function list. This required the evaluator's function dispatch to grow beyond the 0/1/2-argument cases it previously handled; financial functions take three or four arguments. An unknown name at those arities still reports `UnknownFunction`, and a wrong arity for a known financial function does too, rather than filling in defaults. The one exception is the amortization table itself: a table is not a value, so it lives behind the `tally amort` subcommand (FR-6.11). The per-period figures are still reachable as functions (`amort_interest(...)` and friends). ### 5.6 Precision: f64 plus explicit rounding This part of the engine is f64, not the exact `Number` tier used elsewhere (design 2.7). Every formula here needs a non-integer power or a logarithm - CAGR raises to `1/n`, the period solver takes `ln`, the rate solver iterates - and those escape the rationals by definition, so there is nothing for the exact tier to preserve. What money needs is not exactness but controlled rounding, which is a separate concern: `roundToScale(value, decimals, mode)` and `roundToCents` are applied at the point a figure becomes an amount. The default is half-even (banker's rounding); half-up is available but is not the default because it biases totals upward across many roundings. --- ## 6. C API (for Android/FFI) **What exists today:** `engine/src/c_api.zig` is the root of the shared library and implements the design below. Twelve exports, a hand-written `include/tally.h`, and two test layers: Zig tests that build sessions with `std.testing.allocator` so the whole seam is leak-checked, and `engine/test/c_abi_test.c`, which links against the real library through the real header and is run by `zig build test`. `zig build android` cross-compiles the library for arm64-v8a, x86_64 and armeabi-v7a, laid out for Gradle's `jniLibs`, with the JNI layer (6.4) on top. What is not built: the financial and float-view payloads. Standard mode, programmer mode, unit conversion, preview (6.5), whole-category conversion (6.6), save and load (6.7) and the units catalogue are across. ```zig pub const Status = enum(c_int) { ok = 0, eval_error = 1, out_of_memory = 2, invalid_argument = 3 }; pub const Mode = enum(c_int) { standard = 0, programmer = 1 }; /// Interpretation and display, set once on the session rather than per call. The /// display fields are NFR-9.9: the engine holds no digit budget of its own. pub const Config = extern struct { bits: u16 = 64, // 8, 16, 32, 64, 128 is_signed: u8 = 1, big_endian: u8 = 1, separators: u8 = 1, never_abbreviate: u8 = 0, fraction_digits: u16 = 20, max_integer_digits: u16 = 40, significant_digits: u16 = 17, scientific_below_exponent: u16 = 15, }; export fn tally_session_new() ?*Session; export fn tally_session_free(?*Session) void; export fn tally_session_configure(?*Session, ?*const Config) Status; export fn tally_session_config(?*Session, ?*Config) Status; export fn tally_eval(?*Session, ?[*]const u8, usize, c_int, ?*[*]const u8, ?*usize) Status; export fn tally_preview(?*Session, ?[*]const u8, usize, c_int, ?*[*]const u8, ?*usize) Status; export fn tally_convert(?*Session, ?[*]const u8, usize, ?[*]const u8, usize, ?*[*]const u8, ?*usize) Status; export fn tally_session_save(?*Session, ?*[*]const u8, ?*usize) Status; export fn tally_session_load(?*Session, ?[*]const u8, usize) Status; export fn tally_unit_catalog(?*Session, ?*[*]const u8, ?*usize) Status; export fn tally_version(?*usize) [*]const u8; export fn tally_abi_version() u32; ``` Design notes: - **No null-terminated strings.** All inputs take `(ptr, len)` pairs. This prevents buffer overread, allows binary data in expressions if ever needed, and is the idiomatic C pattern for length-known strings. - **A session, not a function.** `Environment` outlives an evaluation, so the handle does too: `x = 5` then `x * 2` works, and `Ans` has a value. This is what the one-shot `tally_eval` in the original sketch could not do. - **`tally_result_free` is gone.** Results are borrowed from the session (6.2), so there is nothing for a caller to free and no way to free it wrongly. - **JSON payloads**, written by `std.json` rather than by hand, so escaping is not a local invention. A standard result is `{"ok":true,"display":"256","exact":true,"truncated":false,"bases":{"hex":"01 00",...}}`, with `bases` present only when the expression used a non-decimal literal (FR-1.9) and `conversion` present only when it was a unit conversion. Programmer mode returns every row the screen shows. An error is `{"ok":false,"error":"division by zero"}`, worded by `engine.phrase`, which is where the CLI and TUI get the same sentence. - **Statuses distinguish three failures**: the expression was bad (`eval_error`, with the reason in the JSON), the machine is out of memory (`out_of_memory`, with no JSON, because there may be no memory to write it), or the call itself was malformed (`invalid_argument`, which touches nothing). - **A units catalogue**, so a picker is filled from `units.unitsIn` and the aliases table rather than from a list retyped in Kotlin. ### 6.1 The decisions this design still owes The boundary is designed with the Android app rather than ahead of it: the JNI layer is the only caller, so its access pattern decides the shape. Each decision below is additive - the Zig API the CLI and TUI use needs nothing new to support any of them. 1. **Session lifetime.** `Environment` holds the variables and the last answer, and both frontends keep one alive across evaluations. A one-shot `tally_eval` cannot: `x = 5` then `x * 2` would fail, and `Ans` would never have a value, on the surface least able to compensate because a phone has no scrollback to retype from. The C API needs an opaque handle (`tally_session_new` / `tally_session_free`, with every other entry point taking one). Decide this first: it changes every signature. 2. **Memory ownership.** See 6.2, which is the longest of these because it is the one that fails silently. 3. **Who chooses the display budget.** `Number.render` takes `FormatOptions`, and NFR-9.9 says the frontend supplies them; a phone screen is not an 80-column terminal and should not inherit one's digit counts. Either the options cross the ABI as fields on the session config, or the C layer invents a budget and Android lives with it. The CLI and TUI each declare their own, so there is a precedent to copy rather than a question to answer from scratch. 4. **What the JSON carries.** A result is more than a string in three places: the multi-base rows of programmer mode, the decomposition of the float view, and the amortization schedule. The unit tables and the financial forms also need enumerating, or Android has to hardcode lists the engine already owns. Rendering inside the library keeps one grouping rule (NFR-7) and one set of words for errors (`engine.phrase`), which argues for the JSON carrying rendered text alongside the raw values rather than values alone. Whatever shape this takes is also what a CLI `--json` would print, which is why the old FR-6.9 was removed rather than specified separately. ### 6.2 Memory ownership across the boundary Every engine entry point takes an `Allocator`; nothing allocates behind a caller's back. That is a good position to start from and it means the ABI gets to choose, so the choice should be made explicitly rather than inherited from the first export written. **What JNI actually does.** Kotlin declares an `external fun`, calls it, and reads the returned bytes into a `ByteArray` or `String` before returning from the same JNI frame. The copy is immediate and the app then owns a JVM object. Nothing on the Kotlin side wants to hold a native pointer, and nothing can be trusted to free one on a predictable schedule: a `ViewModel` is cleared whenever Android decides. **Options considered.** - *A library-owned global allocator*, with `tally_result_free` handing memory back to it. This is the shape the current stub implies. It puts a mutable global in the shipped library, which is the one property the engine does not have today (the only container-level `var` in the tree is inside a test). It is also where the cross-allocator free bug lives: any path that frees a result after its session is gone, or through the wrong allocator, is a corruption rather than an error. A global `DebugAllocator` never runs its leak check in a shared library either, so leaks go unreported. - *A caller-provided buffer*, snprintf style: the app passes a buffer and a capacity, the library writes into it and reports the length it needed. No ownership question at all, no free, thread-safe by construction, and every byte is accounted for as JVM memory. The cost is the two-call pattern when a result does not fit, which for an amortization schedule is the common case rather than the rare one. - *Caller-provided allocator callbacks.* The app passes malloc/free function pointers at session creation. Maximum control, and more machinery than a calculator needs. **The recommendation.** The session owns all of it, and results are borrowed: - `tally_session_new` allocates a session that holds the `Environment`, a scratch arena reset at the end of every call, and a reusable result buffer. No global state: two sessions share nothing, so a test and an app can hold one each. - A result is a `(ptr, len)` into that session's result buffer, valid until the next call on the same session or until `tally_session_free`. The caller copies it immediately, which is what JNI was going to do anyway. `tally_result_free` disappears, and with it every way to free the wrong thing at the wrong time. - One session is used from one thread at a time. That is what a `ViewModel` does naturally, and it keeps locks out of the library. Documented rather than enforced, because enforcing it means a mutex on every call for a constraint the only caller already satisfies. - Out of memory is a status code on every export, never a crash. The engine already threads `error.OutOfMemory` through every path, so this costs nothing to honour. #### Three lifetimes, three allocators The split is not a preference; it is what the engine's own ownership rules already imply. `Environment.setVar` and `setAns` clone into the environment's own allocator (`evaluator.zig`), while `evalStringInfo(env, allocator, source)` builds the parse tree and the returned value from the allocator it is handed. So: | Lifetime | Holder | Allocator | |---|---|---| | Session: variables, `Ans`, the result buffer | `Environment`, `ArrayList(u8)` | the session's general-purpose allocator | | One call: parse tree, intermediate rationals, rendered text | nothing; the arena owns it | `ArenaAllocator` over the session allocator, `reset(.retain_capacity)` at the end of each call | | The bytes handed back | the session's result buffer | session allocator, `clearRetainingCapacity` per call | - **The session allocator is `std.heap.page_allocator`** at the C boundary, and the loader chose it, not taste. The Android library declares no dynamic dependencies (6.3), so every symbol it references must be one it defines: `smp_allocator` keeps its per-thread state in a thread-local, which emits a TLS segment and an undefined `__tls_get_addr` that only Bionic's libc can satisfy. It links on a desktop and fails in `dlopen` on a device, before any code runs. `std.heap.DebugAllocator` over `page_allocator` is free of that symbol and is the upgrade if page granularity ever costs anything measurable; what rules out page granularity being a problem today is the arena below, which buys pages in chunks and hands out bytes. The allocations that do hit `page_allocator` one for one are `Environment` variable clones and the geometric growth of the result buffer, both bounded by what a person types. - **The allocator is a parameter everywhere above the boundary.** The Zig-visible session type takes an `Allocator`, so tests pass `std.testing.allocator` and get leak detection; only the `export fn` picks a default. That is how the ABI gets leak-checked without the library carrying a debug allocator into production. It is also what made the fix above a one-line change to one function. - **`retain_capacity` is what makes the steady state cheap.** The first evaluation buys the arena's pages and every later one reuses them, so a calculator being typed into stops calling the backing allocator almost entirely. **One rule this imposes on the ABI code**, learned by writing the probe rather than by thinking about it: values allocated from the arena must never be individually `deinit`'d. The arena owns them and the reset frees them, and a `defer value.deinit()` in the same scope as the reset runs *after* it - which segfaulted on the first attempt, freeing big-integer limbs into memory the arena had already reclaimed. With an arena the teardown is the reset, and nothing else. A probe that ran `x = 2^100`, then `x + 1`, then `Ans / 2`, resetting the arena between each, produced exactly `633,825,300,114,114,700,748,351,602,688.5` and leaked nothing under the testing allocator. That is the shape the real `tally_eval` should have. **What this trades away.** A borrowed pointer is a rule the caller has to follow: hold it past the next call and it is stale. The alternative that removes the rule is the caller-provided buffer, at the cost of a size-negotiation round trip. If the JNI layer turns out to want a pointer it can keep, the caller-provided buffer is the fallback, and the switch touches only the ABI: the session design above is unchanged either way. **What was verified, and what is still assumed.** The cross-compile has now been run. Building the engine for `aarch64-linux-android` and `x86_64-linux-android` produces a shared object per ABI with **no dynamic dependencies at all** (zero `DT_NEEDED` entries), containing the full exact tier: a probe that evaluated `2^100 + 1` and rendered it through `Number.render` compiled and linked on both, at 230KB under `ReleaseSmall`. No NDK was involved, and the three-lifetime design above compiles for both ABIs too. The shipped libraries, with the panic machinery removed below, are 170KB to 186KB. Asking for `-lc` on those targets fails outright: Zig 0.16 bundles glibc and musl and no Bionic, so it reports `unable to provide libc for target 'aarch64-linux...android.29'` and suggests the gnu and musl triples instead. Anyone wanting libc there needs an NDK sysroot. That is what removed `std.heap.c_allocator` from this design - it was the recommendation here until the build was actually attempted - and the upside is a library that needs no NDK at all. The cost is that allocations do not pass through `malloc`, so Android's malloc-based tooling cannot attribute them; for a calculator whose steady state is an arena reset per keystroke, that is a fair trade. **No longer assumed.** The library loads under `System.loadLibrary`, the JVM resolves the symbols, and the engine computes correctly on a device: on an Android 15 x86_64 image with 16 KiB pages, `2+3*4` gave `14`, `100 km to mi` gave `62.13711922373339696174 mi`, `x = 7` then `x * 6` gave `42` - which is the `Environment`-survives-the-arena-reset rule holding across calls - and `1/0` reported `division by zero` rather than crashing. The 10 instrumented tests pass on the same image. What remains untested is a physical device, arm64-v8a in particular, and behaviour under real memory pressure. **What a library with no `DT_NEEDED` actually costs, found on a device.** The zero above is a constraint, not just a property, and the first build that ran on an emulator did not load at all: ``` java.lang.UnsatisfiedLinkError: dlopen failed: cannot locate symbol "__tls_get_addr" referenced by ".../lib/x86_64/libtally.so" ``` Nothing in the engine asked for a libc symbol on purpose. Three pieces of std did, all on paths that had nothing to do with arithmetic: | Symbol | Pulled in by | Removed by | |---|---|---| | `__tls_get_addr` | `smp_allocator`'s thread-local | `page_allocator` (6.2) | | `__tls_get_addr`, `getauxval` | std's default panic handler: a thread-local recursion guard, and reading the library's own ELF headers to print a stack trace | a panic handler that writes the message to stderr and traps, letting Android's own crash handler produce the tombstone | | `getauxval` (arm64-v8a only) | `std.heap.pageSize()`, a runtime auxv query wherever Zig's `page_size_min` and `page_size_max` differ - which is aarch64 alone, at 4 KiB to 64 KiB | `std.options.queryPageSize` returning 16 KiB, with only the *maximum* overridden | Two things about that last row are worth keeping. It reproduced on **arm64-v8a only**, so the x86_64 emulator that caught the first failure would have passed it while most real phones failed - the symbol audit below is what catches that class, not testing. And `page_size_min` was deliberately left alone: std documents it as the alignment a caller may assume from a page allocation, and on a 4 KiB kernel `mmap` returns 4 KiB-aligned memory, so raising it would promise an alignment the kernel does not give. Overriding the ceiling and the query rounds lengths up, which is the safe direction. The general lesson is that a freestanding shared library's dependencies are decided by code that never runs. Two of the three came from a debugging aid on the panic path, and with `BIND_NOW` set - it is, on all three ABIs - even an unreferenced PLT entry is resolved at load, so "nothing calls it" is not a defence. The audit is therefore part of the build's evidence rather than a one-time check: for each ABI, zero `DT_NEEDED`, zero undefined dynamic symbols, no TLS segment, and `LOAD` aligned to 0x4000. Removing the panic machinery also took the libraries from ~290KB to ~170-186KB. ### 6.4 How Kotlin reaches the C ABI **Decided: a hand-written `engine/src/jni.zig`, compiled only for Android, with no NDK.** A Kotlin `external fun` cannot call `tally_eval` directly; something has to translate `jstring` and `JNIEnv*` into pointers and lengths (design 6.3). Three ways to get that glue were considered: 1. **`engine/src/jni.zig`, compiled only for Android.** The glue stays in one language, is testable from Zig, and adds no dependency to the app. It needs the JNI type definitions, which means either the NDK's `jni.h` or hand-declaring what it uses. 2. **A small C shim compiled by Gradle** (`externalNativeBuild` with CMake). Standard Android practice, and it moves native compilation into Gradle, which this design has kept out. 3. **JNA**, which calls a plain C ABI with no per-project glue at all. Cheapest to start, and it costs a dependency and per-call marshalling. The first, without `jni.h`, because the library already builds with no NDK and no libc (6.2) and dragging in a sysroot for three functions would undo that. **What that costs, and how it is held down.** `JNIEnv*` is a pointer to a table of function pointers at fixed indices, so reaching `NewStringUTF`, `GetStringUTFChars` and `ReleaseStringUTFChars` without the header means four integers have to be right, and a wrong one is a jump into the wrong function rather than a compile error. Three things guard it: - The table is declared at its full published length (233 entries since JNI 1.6, with `GetObjectRefType` last), and a comptime check rejects an index past the end. The arithmetic that arrives at exactly that length is written out in the file, because that count is what catches a dropped entry. - `JNI_OnLoad` proves the indices against the JVM that is actually running, before anything else: it checks the version, then round-trips a string through `NewStringUTF` and `GetStringUTFChars` and compares the bytes. On failure it returns `JNI_ERR`, so `System.loadLibrary` throws at startup rather than the app crashing later inside an evaluation. - The tests run every entry point against a synthetic function table, covering the marshalling, the handle arithmetic and the self-check in both directions (including a deliberately broken table). They cannot check the indices themselves, because they supply the table. - **A real JVM can, and not only Android's.** JNI's function table is fixed by the specification rather than by the platform, so a desktop JVM resolves the same indices an Android runtime does. `zig build jvm-test` builds the library for the host, compiles `engine/test/java/dev/lerch/tally/TallyEngine.java`, and runs it: `System.loadLibrary` executes `JNI_OnLoad`, and the test then drives every entry point, including a catalogue string over 4KB. Moving one index by a single slot makes that step fail, which is how we know the check has teeth. It is a separate step rather than part of `zig build test` because it needs a JDK and nothing else in the suite does. **The glue is also what makes borrowed results safe.** The bytes from `tally_eval` become a Java string inside the same function that asked for them, so the app never holds a native pointer and cannot outlive one. `c_api` leaves a NUL just past the reported length for exactly this, so the copy the JVM makes is the only copy in the call. The C ABI is unchanged by this choice: a Swift or C consumer links the same library and calls it directly. ### 6.3 Who the ABI is for, and what is actually Android-specific The shape in 6.2 was chosen from Android's access pattern, which invites a fair question: should the exports be named for Android, or built differently per target? The answer is no to the first and yes to the second, for reasons that are not symmetrical. **The C ABI is not Android-specific, and its names should not pretend to be.** Take the decisions one at a time and ask which consumer they came from: - *A session handle* is what any caller wants. Variables and `Ans` outlive a single evaluation for a C program, a Swift app or a WASM page exactly as they do for Kotlin. - *Borrowed results* suit every managed binding, because they all copy on receipt: JNI into a `ByteArray`, Swift into a `String` or `Data`, JS into a string. The rule only chafes for a raw C caller that wants to accumulate results without copying, and `sqlite3_column_text` has held that exact contract for two decades in the most widely embedded C library there is. - *Status codes instead of crashes on OOM* is table stakes anywhere. - *One session per thread at a time* is what a `ViewModel` does naturally and what a C caller can arrange trivially. Only two choices are platform-flavoured, and neither is visible in a signature: using `c_allocator` for the session's long-lived allocations (internal), and preferring JSON for compound results (a preference Kotlin, Swift and JS all share). So the exports keep names that say what they do: `tally_session_new`, `tally_eval`, `tally_session_free`. Naming them `tally_android_eval` would encode the first consumer into a contract that outlives it, and the second consumer would then either call functions labelled for a platform it is not, or get a duplicate set to keep in step. This project has already renamed one thing for that reason: `Coverage.addModule` became `addReport` because the old name described the caller's mental model rather than the thing itself. If a future consumer genuinely cannot live with a borrowed pointer, the answer is one more function beside the existing ones (`tally_eval_into`, taking a caller-provided buffer), not a rename and not a parallel set. **There is an Android-specific layer, and it is not the C ABI.** A Kotlin `external fun` does not call `tally_eval`. JNI resolves either a symbol named `Java___` or whatever `JNI_OnLoad` registers with `RegisterNatives`, and either way the function's signature is in JNI's terms: a `JNIEnv*`, a `jobject`, and `jstring` arguments that have to be pinned with `GetStringUTFChars` and released again. That translation is genuinely Android's: - it names a Java package, so it cannot be shared with anything else, - it needs `jni.h` types that do not exist on any other target, - and it is thin: convert, call the C ABI, copy the result into a `jstring` or `ByteArray`, return. That layer belongs in its own file (`engine/src/jni.zig`), compiled only for Android behind a build option, with names that do say Android because JNI requires it. The C ABI stays byte-identical on every target; Android gets an additional, thinner set of exports on top of it. A Swift or C consumer links the same library and calls the C ABI directly, with no shim at all, because Swift imports C headers natively. **The shim is also what makes borrowed results safe here.** The copy into JVM memory happens inside `jni.zig`, in the same function, before control returns to Kotlin. The app never holds a native pointer and cannot outlive one, so the lifetime rule in 6.2 is enforced by code in this repository that can be tested, rather than by an app developer remembering a sentence in a document. That is a better position than the caller-buffer alternative would leave us in, and it is the argument that settled 6.2 for me. Two things to add while the boundary is being written, both cheap and both awkward to retrofit: - **A hand-written `include/tally.h`.** Zig no longer emits reliable C headers, and the header is what a Swift or C consumer actually compiles against. Writing it by hand is fine; leaving it to drift is not, so a test should compile it against the real exports (a `translate-c` of the header, or a C file that takes the address of every function, built as part of `zig build test`). - **`tally_abi_version()` beside `tally_version()`.** Android ships a prebuilt `.so` that can fall out of step with the Kotlin calling it, and a struct layout or an argument order that changed silently is a crash in the field rather than an error. The product version and the ABI version are different facts and should be separately readable. ### 6.5 Preview: an evaluation that stores nothing **Decided and built, for the live result on the standard screen (9.2).** A screen that answers as you type calls the engine on every keystroke, and `tally_eval` is the wrong call for that: typing `x = 7` would assign `x` at `x =` ... `7`, and every intermediate answer would overwrite `Ans`, so `Ans` would mean "whatever was last on screen" rather than "what I last committed". Both are silent - the numbers are plausible - which is the kind of wrong a calculator cannot afford. ```zig export fn tally_preview(?*Session, ?[*]const u8, usize, c_int, ?*[*]const u8, ?*usize) Status; ``` Same arguments, same JSON, same borrowing rule as `tally_eval`; the only difference is that nothing in the session changes. An assignment previews as the value it would store, and a built-in target (`pi = 3`) previews as the error committing it would give. - **A separate function, not a flag.** A `bool` on `tally_eval` changes a signature that shipped; folding a bit into `mode` makes one integer mean two things. A new export is additive, and `abi_version` moves to 2 so a prebuilt library without it is refused at startup rather than failing on the first keystroke. - **The guarantee is the type, not a branch.** Assignment is a statement (Task 5.19): the parser only produces it at the root, never inside an expression. So `evalStringInfo` now handles the root assignment itself, and the recursive evaluator below it takes a `*const Environment` - it *cannot* store anything. The preview path, `engine.previewStringInfo`, is the same walk without the two writes at the end, and it takes a `*const Environment` too, so "preview mutated the session" is a compile error rather than a test. The CLI and TUI get the same function; neither uses it yet. - **Programmer mode is already pure** - it never touches the environment - so its preview is its evaluation. ### 6.6 Convert: one value, every unit **Decided and built, for the converter screen (9.6).** ```zig export fn tally_convert(?*Session, value: ?[*]const u8, usize, unit: ?[*]const u8, usize, ?*[*]const u8, ?*usize) Status; ``` `{"ok":true,"input":"100","from":"C","category":"temperature","results":[{"unit":"C", "display":"100","exact":true,"truncated":false},{"unit":"F","display":"212",...},...]}` - **The whole category in one call,** because the screen shows all of it. The alternative - one `tally_eval("100 C to F")` per row - is a dozen JNI round trips and a dozen parses per keystroke, and puts the list of units in Kotlin. - **The value is an expression, previewed** (6.5): `6*12` in inches works, and nothing in the session changes. - **A row that fails carries its own `error`** and leaves the rest of the table alone. - **The rendering budget is the session's** (`Config`, 6.1 point 3), so the converter sets fewer digits on its own session than the calculator does. Over JNI that is `configureDisplay`, which reads the current config, changes the two digit counts and writes it back, so the other fields keep their values. - `abi_version` 3. --- ### 6.7 Save and load: a session that survives the process **Decided and built, for the calculator reopening as it was left (9.2).** The engine holds the variables and `Ans`, so the app saving only what its screen shows would bring back `x * 2` without `x`. ```zig export fn tally_session_save(?*Session, ?*[*]const u8, ?*usize) Status; export fn tally_session_load(?*Session, ?[*]const u8, usize) Status; ``` `{"format":1,"ans":{"exact":"1/7"},"variables":[{"name":"r","value":{"bits":"3ff6a09e667f3bcd"}}]}` - **Exact, both tiers.** An exact value is saved as `toFractionString` writes it, every digit; it loads through `Rational.parseFraction`, which has no length cap, because `parse`'s 512-digit limit is right for typing and wrong for `factorial(1000)`. An inexact value is saved as its IEEE-754 bits, so it comes back as the same float and not a decimal near it. A reloaded session saves to the same bytes it was loaded from. - **Not a replay.** Re-evaluating the history on launch was the alternative and is wrong twice: `Ans * 2` depends on every answer before it, so history cannot be trimmed without changing values, and clearing it would silently drop the variables. - **All or nothing.** The text is read and checked completely - format, a name an assignment could have made, no duplicates, exactly one well-formed value form - and only then swapped in. A refused load leaves the session untouched. Unknown fields are ignored, so a later format can add to it. - **Deterministic:** variables are listed by name. - **Not included:** the configuration, which is the frontend's to set. - Tested by round trips (2^100, 1/3, sqrt(2), factorial(500), `Ans`), a byte-identical re-save, a load that replaces rather than merges, fourteen malformed states each leaving the session as it was, and an allocation-failure sweep over save and load. ABI version 5. ## 7. CLI Design ``` tally [OPTIONS] tally convert [to] tally amort [payment] [--monthly] [--summary] [--exact] Options: -p, --programmer Programmer mode --bits Bit width: 8, 16, 32, 64, 128 (default 64). Implies -p --signed / --unsigned How to read programmer values (default signed). Imply -p --endian Byte order of the hex and ASCII rows (default big). Implies -p -h, --help Show help --version Show version Each subcommand answers -h with its own usage. ``` The flags this section used to list (`-b`, `--base`, `--json`, `--abi`) were never built. `--bits` is the spelling, there is no way to select a single output base (the multi-base view appears when the expression used a non-decimal literal), and JSON output belongs to the C API rather than the CLI. `tally struct` goes with section 3. ### CLI Output Examples Standard: ``` $ tally "2^32 - 1" 4,294,967,295 ``` Programmer (actual output, verified against the binary): ``` $ tally -p "0xFF & 0x0F" dec(signed): 15 dec(unsigned): 15 hex: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 0F oct: 0 000 000 000 000 000 000 017 bin: 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 1111 ``` Separators are spaces, not underscores, and the base prefix appears only in the clipboard form. There is no `bits:` line. Struct (SKETCH, section 3 is not built): ``` $ tally struct "struct { u32 x; u8 flags; u16 id; u64 ts; }" ABI: x86-64 System V | Endian: little Offset Size Field Type Align Padding ────── ──── ────────── ───── ───── ─────── 0 4 x u32 4 4 1 flags u8 1 5 1 (padding) 1 byte 6 2 id u16 2 8 8 ts u64 8 Total: 16 bytes (alignment: 8, padding: 1 byte, tail: 0) Memory map: 00: [xxxx xxxx xxxx xxxx xxxx xxxx xxxx xxxx] x 04: [ffff ffff] [········] [iiii iiii iiii iiii] flags, pad, id 08: [tttt tttt tttt tttt tttt tttt tttt tttt ts 0C: tttt tttt tttt tttt tttt tttt tttt tttt] ``` Unit conversion (actual output): ``` $ tally convert 100 km mi 100 km = 62.13711922373339696174 mi $ tally "72 F to C" 72 F = 22.22222222222222222222 C ``` Both operands are echoed, canonical short names are used rather than long or symbol forms, and the full exact expansion is shown (20 fractional digits for a non-terminating one). `tally "5 kg + 3 lb"` is FR-4.2 and is NOT implemented: it reports `error: unexpected token`. --- ## 8. TUI Layout The mockups in this section are sketches of intent, not records of output. Where one disagrees with the program, the program is right: the frames in `src/tui.zig`'s render tests are drawn by the real draw path and asserted character by character, which is where to look for what a view actually produces. Sketches that are known to have drifted are marked. ### 8.0.0 How the TUI is tested Terminal code is usually left uncovered on the grounds that it needs a terminal. Most of it does not. Two harnesses cover nearly all of it: - **Rendered frames.** `src/tui/test_render.zig` draws a real frame through the real widget draw path into a real surface, then reads the cells back as rows of text. Assertions are made against what a user would see (`"= PMT -1,199.10"`, `"rows 1-7 of 360"`), plus two structural checks bundled as `test_render.expectSound(rows, full_width_rows)`: `furniture(rows).intact()`, which checks that the separator, prompt and status rows are still where they belong, and `noTextClipped`, which checks that no row other than the ones drawn full width on purpose reaches the final column. The first catches content that overflowed its region downward; the second catches content too wide for the terminal, which `draw.writeStr` truncates in silence. This originally offered `wellFormed(rows, width)` instead, described here as a check that no column had been miscomputed. It compared each row's length against the width it had just been allocated with, so it could never fail. Two layout bugs (programmer rows drawn over the prompt at 100x16, financial chips drawn over it at 20x5) lived under a green suite because of it. `noTextClipped` was written at the same time and then left uncalled for as long, which hid two more: the 64-bit binary row needed 90 columns and lost its low bits on an 80-column terminal, and every mode's status line lost its last hint mid-word. Style is still not observable: `flatten` keeps graphemes and drops attributes, so focus highlighting and the cursor cannot be asserted, and tests that care assert a neighbouring glyph and say so. - **Real event handlers.** `vxfw.EventContext` is constructible in a test, so key presses and mouse events go through `handleKey` and `handleMouse` rather than through a reimplementation of them. This is what catches a binding that was never routed, or one mode swallowing another mode's keys. What is left uncovered is the terminal boundary itself: the event loop, `vaxis` initialisation, and `main`. Coverage is reported per source tree (engine, CLI, TUI) with disjoint include paths, so a file is never accounted for twice and a query tool never has to guess which report answers for it. ### 8.0 Mouse Input Architecture The TUI is mouse-driven as well as keyboard-driven (FR-7.11). Rather than each view doing its own coordinate arithmetic against hardcoded layout constants, hit targets are registered as a side effect of drawing: ```zig pub const Action = union(enum) { mode: Mode, // tab bar prog_field: struct { field: ProgField, bit: ?u7 }, // focus field, optional cursor toggle_bit: u7, // flip one bit focus_input, close_help, toggle_float, cycle_width, toggle_endian, toggle_signedness, toggle_float_format, conv_category: UnitCategory, conv_from: usize, conv_to: usize, conv_swap, fin_form: Form, fin_field: usize, // financial chips and rows }; pub const RegionSet = struct { items: [512]HitRegion, // { row, col, len, action } count: usize, pub fn clear(self: *RegionSet) void; pub fn add(self: *RegionSet, row: u16, col: u16, len: u16, action: Action) void; pub fn at(self: *const RegionSet, row: u16, col: u16) ?Action; }; ``` Key properties: - **Regions are rebuilt every frame.** `clearRegions()` runs at the top of the draw function, and each view calls `addRegion` right where it draws the thing. Hit targets therefore cannot drift out of sync with what is on screen, which is the usual failure mode for hand-maintained click maps. With one caveat that was found by review: registration is co-located with drawing, but drawing itself had no bounds check, so a row drawn off the bottom registered a region anyway and a click on the separator focused an invisible field. Co-location keeps the mapping honest only as far as the drawing is; the height guards added to the programmer and convert views are what make the property hold. - **Newest region wins.** `at()` searches backwards, so a view can register a broad row-wide fallback first (click anywhere on the HEX row to focus it) and then finer targets on top (click a specific nibble to put the cursor there). - **Draw-time registration means one source of truth.** The same loop that decides where a bit character goes also registers that cell, so the mapping from cell to bit index is written once. `registerDigitRegions` mirrors `drawFieldWithCursor`'s digit walk for the same reason. - **Left press only.** Release, motion, and drag are ignored so one physical click produces exactly one action. The wheel is the one exception: in financial mode `wheel_up`/`wheel_down` scroll the amortization schedule, handled before the press filter because a wheel event is not a press. The wheel does not go through the region table at all, since it acts on the view rather than on a specific cell. - **A fixed-size buffer, not an allocation.** Drawing happens on every keystroke and must not fail; an exhausted budget silently drops extra regions (a click does nothing) instead of erroring. 512 comfortably covers the worst case, the 128-bit programmer view. vxfw already puts the terminal in mouse mode and hit-tests surfaces, delivering `.mouse` events to the root widget with local coordinates equal to screen coordinates, so no terminal-level setup is needed here. Click semantics are chosen per field to match what the data means: a bit grid cell and a BIN digit each represent exactly one bit, so clicking flips it, while a HEX nibble or OCT digit holds several bits with no single sensible "toggle", so clicking places the cursor for typing instead. ### 8.1 Standard Mode ``` +- Tally ----------------- [Standard] [Programmer] [Financial] [Convert] -+ | | | History: | | 2^10 = 1024 | | sqrt(144) = 12 | | Ans * 2 = 24 | | | | --------------------------------------------------------------- | | > 3 * pi + 1_ | | | | = 10.42477796... | | | +- ?:help | Tab:mode | Enter:eval | Ctrl-L:clear | Ctrl-C:quit -----------+ ``` The footer is the real status line. The `[d]ec [h]ex [o]ct [b]in` quick-switch it used to show was FR-7.8, which has been removed: those letters are hex and binary digits once the value fields became editable. Two details the sketch simplifies: there is no "History:" heading, and the answer is not repeated under the prompt. A result appears in the history list as `= value` on the line under its expression, which is where the sketch's `= 10.42...` line comes from. ### 8.2 Programmer Mode A real 80-column frame, 64-bit, value 0xDEADBEEFCAFEF00D: ``` | Tally Standard Programmer Financial Convert | | | | Bits: 64 Signed: yes Endian: BE [float: Ctrl-F] | | | | 1101 1110 1010 1101 1011 1110 1110 1111 | | 1100 1010 1111 1110 1111 0000 0000 1101 | | | | DEC(s): -2,401,053,089,206,439,923 | | DEC(u): 16,045,690,984,503,111,693 | | HEX: DE AD BE EF CA FE F0 0D | | ASCII: . . . . . . . . | | OCT: 1 572 555 756 771 277 570 015 | | BIN: 1101 1110 1010 1101 1011 1110 1110 1111 | | 1100 1010 1111 1110 1111 0000 0000 1101 | | | | (history) | |--------------------------------------------------------------------------------| | > | | Tab:mode | Arrows:nav | Space:toggle | Up/Down:field | Ctrl-W:width | ``` The binary row wraps at 32 bits because 64 will not fit an 80-column terminal (FR-7.3.2); a 90-column one shows it on one line. The status line drops whole hints from the end rather than cutting one in half (FR-7.9.1), which is why `Ctrl-E:endian` and `Ctrl-F:float` are absent here and the float affordance sits on the header row instead. An earlier wireframe in this section showed a bordered "Bit Pattern (63 -> 0)" box, a `cursor: bit 3` indicator, `0x`-prefixed hex, and a footer of single-letter keys (`w:width s:sign e:endian y:yank`). None of that was built: there are no borders, the prefix appears only in the clipboard form, the width and sign keys are Ctrl-chords because plain letters are hex digits in an editable field (FR-7.8), and there is no yank command yet (open item 14). #### 8.2.1 Programmer Mode - Editable Fields (REVISED DESIGN) The programmer mode is an **editable multi-field form** where every representation of the value is live-editable. A change in any field instantly updates all others. Closer to integer.exposed than a traditional calculator with a prompt. Fields (navigable with Up/Down): 1. Bit grid - arrow keys move, Space toggles individual bits 2. DEC(s) - editable signed decimal 3. DEC(u) - editable unsigned decimal 4. HEX - editable hex (space-separated bytes: FF 00 AB CD) 5. ASCII - read-only (derived) view of the bytes, one glyph per byte, MSB first, aligned column-for-column under the HEX row directly above it. Printable bytes (0x20-0x7E) show as themselves; every other byte shows as `.`, matching the `xxd` hex-dump convention (e.g. `.ELF`, `...ascii`). Not part of the Up/Down focus cycle since it has nothing to edit. 6. OCT - editable octal 7. BIN - editable binary (nibble-separated: 1111 0000) 8. Expression - full expression evaluator (& | ^ ~ << >> etc.) Field 8 was never built. `ProgField.expression` exists and Up/Down cycles through it, but no row is drawn for it and no key does anything there, so it reads as a keystroke that did nothing (open item 18). The expression language is reachable from the input line instead, which is where it has always been. Navigation: - Up/Down moves focus between fields - When a text field is focused, typing replaces its content; value updates on Enter (or live as you type - TBD) - When bit grid is focused: left/right/up/down navigate, Space toggles - Tab cycles between Standard/Programmer mode - Ctrl-W cycles bit width (8/16/32/64/128) - Ctrl-E toggles endianness display (LE/BE) Bit width is a non-destructive display lens: - The stored value keeps full precision (u128). Cycling the width never truncates it, so narrowing to a smaller width and then widening again restores the hidden upper bits. - The DEC/HEX/OCT/BIN/ASCII rows and the bit grid show the value masked to the current width. - While the stored value has bits set beyond the current width, a warning line is shown ("value exceeds N bits - showing low bits (widen to restore)"). It is a warning, not an error: the value is still usable. - Explicit value edits (typing a decimal digit, toggling a bit, editing a hex/oct/bin digit) commit to the current width, clearing any hidden upper bits. Only width cycling is non-destructive; deliberately editing at a narrow width means you are now working at that width. Endianness: - Toggle with Ctrl-E; header shows current setting (`Endian: LE` / `Endian: BE`) - Default: big-endian. The HEX row's primary job is to show the value in hex, so by default it reads MSB-first and matches DEC/OCT/BIN. Little-endian is the opt-in "how it sits in x86-64 memory" view. - Affects: HEX byte display order and ASCII byte order only. In LE the display bytes are reversed (e.g. 0xDEADBEEF -> `EF BE AD DE`). - Does NOT affect: the underlying value, DEC, OCT, or BIN display, nor the clipboard `raw` form of HEX (which stays the canonical MSB-first number). - Rationale for BE default (revised from an earlier LE default): defaulting to LE would reverse the HEX row so it no longer matches the number shown in the DEC/BIN rows directly beside it, which is surprising in a calculator context. Text/ASCII literals: - Single-quoted strings in expressions: `'ELF'`, `'RIFF'`, `'a'` - Each character becomes one byte packed into the integer - Packing order follows endianness setting: - BE: first char -> most significant used byte (`'AB'` = 0x4142) - LE: first char -> least significant byte (`'AB'` = 0x4241) - Max chars = bit_width / 8 (1 for 8-bit, 2 for 16, 4 for 32, 8 for 64) - Non-ASCII characters are an error - Useful for: magic numbers (`'ELF'`), protocol tags, inspecting how string bytes pack into integer registers IEEE 754 float interpretation: - A sub-view within programmer mode (toggle with a key, e.g. Ctrl-F) - Reinterprets the current bit pattern as an IEEE 754 float - Supported formats: - float32 (1 sign + 8 exponent + 23 significand, bias 127) - float64 (1 sign + 11 exponent + 52 significand, bias 1023) - Bit grid color-codes the three fields: - Sign bit: one color (e.g. pink) - Exponent: another color (e.g. cyan) - Significand: another color (e.g. green) - Display below the bit grid shows: - Decimal value (exact) - Value and ULP use scientific notation for very small/large magnitudes (e.g. a subnormal ULP shows as `1.4e-45`), fixed-point otherwise, so each row stays on one line - Formula: (-1)^s * 2^(e-bias) * 1.mantissa - Classification: normal, denormal, zero, infinity, NaN - ULP: delta to next representable value - Raw fields: sign=0, exp=127 (unbiased: 0), frac=0x000000 - Input: can type a decimal float value (e.g. `3.14`) and it shows the closest representable bit pattern, noting if rounding occurred - Auto-entry: switching into programmer mode (Tab) with a non-integer value in `ans` opens this float view automatically on the exact f64 bit pattern, since the integer bit views cannot represent a fraction. An integer `ans` uses the integer views as usual. Infinity/NaN also open the float view (the only place they are representable). - Toggling bits in the grid updates the float interpretation live - Does NOT change bit_width setting - float32 uses 32-bit view, float64 uses 64-bit view (auto-switches width when toggling float format) ### 8.3 Struct Visualizer (sub-view of Programmer Mode) - DESIGN ONLY, NOT BUILT ``` ┌─ Tally ────────────────── [Programmer > Struct Layout] ─────────────┐ │ ABI: x86-64 SysV Endian: LE │ │ │ │ Definition: │ │ struct { u32 x; u8 flags; u16 id; u64 ts; } │ │ │ │ ┌─ Memory Map ─────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐ │ │ │ 00 01 02 03 │ 04 │ 05 │ 06 07 │ 08 09 0A 0B 0C 0D 0E 0F │ │ │ │ │ ████████████ │ ▓▓ │ ░░ │ ▒▒▒▒▒ │ ░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░ │ │ │ │ │ x │flag│pad │ id │ ts │ │ │ │ └───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ │ │ │ │ Field Type Offset Size Align Pad Before │ │ x u32 0 4 4 0 │ │ flags u8 4 1 1 0 │ │ id u16 6 2 2 1 │ │ ts u64 8 8 8 0 │ │ │ │ Total: 16 bytes | Alignment: 8 | Padding: 1 byte (6.25%) │ │ Packed would be: 15 bytes │ └──── a:abi e:endian Enter:edit struct Esc:back ─────────────────────┘ ``` ### 8.4 Convert Mode ``` Tally [Standard] [Programmer] [Convert] Category: Length Mass Temperature Time Digital Storage Speed Area Volume Energy Pressure Data Rate Angle 100 km = 62.13711922373339 mi 1 km = 0.621371192237334 mi From To > nm nm um um mm mm ... > mi ------------------------------------------------------------------ > 100 Arrows:select | Ctrl-S:swap | `:input | Tab:mode | ?:help ``` Structure: - **Category chips** wrap to as many lines as the terminal width needs. The selected chip is highlighted; when the selection zone has focus on the category column it is highlighted differently again. - **The value** comes from the shared input line at the bottom, keeping input consistent with the other modes. A bare number is used directly; anything else is evaluated as a standard expression first, so `2*3.5` or `sqrt(2)` work as input values. - **The factor line** shows the single multiplicative factor between the two units. Temperature is affine, so instead of a misleading number it says so. - **Two unit columns** (From and To) list every unit in the category with the selection marked. Both columns are clickable; the whole column slot is the click target, not just the name text, so a one-character unit like `m` is not a one-character target. - If the terminal is too short to show every unit, a `... N more (resize to see all)` line is drawn rather than silently truncating the list. Interaction: - Backtick toggles between the input zone and the selection zone, matching the convention already used in programmer mode. - In the selection zone, Left/Right move between the category, From, and To columns; Up/Down move the selection within the focused column, wrapping. - Ctrl-S swaps the two units, and works from either zone. - Selecting a new category resets the unit pair to that category's defaults (its base unit plus a distinct second unit), since the previous indices would refer to unrelated units in the new table. --- ### 8.5 Financial Mode ``` Tally [Standard] [Programmer] [Financial] [Convert] Calculation: CAGR Compound TVM Amortization > Principal 200,000 Rate per period 0.5 % Periods 360 Payment (derived) Payment 1,199.10 | total interest 231,677.04 | total paid 431,677.04 Period Payment Interest Principal Balance 1 1,199.10 1,000.00 199.10 199,800.90 2 1,199.10 999.00 200.10 199,600.80 3 1,199.10 998.00 201.10 199,399.70 ... rows 1-7 of 360 (PgUp/PgDn) ------------------------------------------------------------------ > Up/Dn:field | L/R:calc | Enter:eval | Space:END/BGN | Ctrl-U:clear ``` Four forms behind one set of chips: CAGR, Compound, TVM, Amortization. The TVM form adds a sixth row, an END/BGN toggle for annuity due. **Solving by omission.** TVM and compound interest solve for whichever field is left blank, the way a financial calculator does and the way the engine's own `TvmParams` is shaped. Blank is therefore a meaningful state rather than an error, and a blank solve-for field renders as `[solve]` instead of looking like missing input. When the form is not yet answerable it says what it is waiting for ("clear one field to solve for it"), so an incomplete form is never a silent no-op. Amortization treats a blank payment differently: it means "derive it", since a schedule always has a payment. **Defaults are prefilled, not placeheld.** Compounds/year starts at `1` rather than showing an empty field that means "annual". That keeps "blank means solve for this" true for every field the user sees, instead of blank meaning a default in one place and a solve slot in another. The prefill is baked into the comptime initial state rather than applied at draw time, because a draw-time default cannot tell "never touched" from "deliberately cleared". Clearing a non-solvable field has to report that it needs a value, not try to solve for it. **A solved rate says which kind it is.** Above annual compounding the compound form reports `= rate 18.00% nominal (19.56% effective)`. See design 5.2 for why: the nominal figure alone invites a wrong comparison against a quoted APY, and this is the only place the calculator produces a rate rather than consuming one. **Two ways to enter a number, deliberately.** Typing in the form zone goes straight into the focused field, which is what makes quick entry work. The shared input line at the bottom evaluates an expression and drops the result into the focused field, so a value can also be computed from outside the form. **Fields hold expressions, and group as you type.** `12 * 30` is valid input for a period count; it displays verbatim in orange with an `(Enter)` prompt, and Enter evaluates it in place. A plain number is grouped for display as it is typed (`200` then `0` shows `2,000`), while the buffer keeps the ungrouped text so it still parses and still round-trips through Enter. Grouping the buffer instead would mean stripping separators on every read and would make cursor arithmetic depend on where the commas happen to fall. A typed comma is absorbed for the same reason. A field holding an unevaluated expression is reported as such rather than being treated as empty, since a blank field means "solve for this" in two of the four forms and silently conflating the two would be a wrong answer rather than a cosmetic problem. **Rates say they are rates.** A percent field renders a trailing `%` after the value and absorbs a typed one, so `6%` and `6` both mean six percent. The label carries that information too, but not once the eye has moved to the value column, which is where a bare `6` is ambiguous between a rate and a multiplier. **Focus styling.** The focused field is a dark selection fill (Molokai's own selection colour) with the value in its normal foreground, and a single yellow block cursor. The earlier version reversed bright cyan into the background, which read as a 1980s terminal and fought every other colour on screen; a neutral fill keeps the number legible and leaves the cursor as the only bright cell on the row. The row marker and focused label are yellow, matching the mode's own tab colour rather than introducing a fourth accent. **Results are live, not history.** Every keystroke recomputes, so there is nothing to submit and nothing is appended to history. That is why financial mode is the one mode whose input line does not produce a history entry. **The schedule is the reason this mode exists.** Everything else here is available as an expression function (FR-5.7), but a 360-row table is not a value. It scrolls with PgUp/PgDn from either zone and with the mouse wheel, and shows `rows X-Y of N` whenever it is showing a window rather than the whole thing. The scroll offset is clamped at draw time rather than at scroll time, so a resize or a changed period count cannot leave a stale offset showing an empty table. **Formula breakdown.** Under the result, the relationship being solved is shown, plus a substituted line for the forms where it fits (`= (25000 / 10000)^(1/5) - 1`). TVM and amortization show the general form only; substituting five variables into the TVM identity produces a line too long to be useful. Interaction, consistent with the other modes: - Backtick toggles the input zone and the form zone. - Up/Down move between fields, wrapping. Left/Right switch calculation, so every form is reachable from the keyboard alone (FR-7.7). - Enter evaluates the focused field in place. - Space toggles END/BGN on the payments row; Ctrl-U (or Delete) empties a field, which is also how a TVM variable is marked as the one to solve for. - Clicking a chip selects a calculation; clicking a row focuses that field. Switching calculation resets the focused field and the scroll offset, but each form keeps its own entries, so moving between them does not discard typing. ### 8.6 Help Overlay The overlay is a static line list (headers, bindings, free text) rendered through one windowed loop, not a sequence of sections that each gate themselves on the remaining height. The old shape had a specific failure: every section ended with `if (row < height - 6)`, so as sections were added the later ones silently disappeared on a 24-row terminal with no indication anything was missing. That was found by a test asserting the Convert section was present, which failed once the Financial section was added above it. As a line list the content can be scrolled (Up/Down, PgUp/PgDn, wheel) and its length is knowable without drawing, which is what lets the App clamp its own scroll offset. Any non-scrolling key returns, preserving the "press a key to get out" behaviour. The footer shows `lines X-Y of N` only when something is off screen, so a tall terminal is not cluttered with a position indicator it does not need. --- ## 9. Android UI Design The shell (9.1) and every screen but standard (9.3-9.7) are still DESIGN ONLY. 9.2 was rewritten after the first build ran on a device, which is the input the rest of this section was waiting for. That first build was a text field, the system keyboard, an `=` button and a monospace scrollback: the TUI's prompt moved onto glass, the exact paradigm the paragraph below rules out. It proved the boundary and was nearly unusable, and the specific ways it failed are what 9.2 is now built against. Read the struct layout screen (9.4) as doubly speculative, since the engine feature behind it is also unbuilt. The remaining designs are deliberately left unreconciled with what the TUI became during the review, even where the two now disagree (9.5 has a Calculate button; the TUI dropped it because results are live). Expect each to be rewritten the way 9.2 was: from a running screen, not from what the TUI settled on. **The principle the built screens converged on,** written down because it was learned by having proposals rejected, and the unbuilt screens are where it will be tested next: - **Nothing moves unless the user moves it.** No auto-scroll to a chosen item, no reordering under a finger, no list that jumps when a value changes. The value line already says what was chosen; motion the user did not cause costs them their place. (Rejected along the way: scrolling the result list to the chosen unit; recency order within a category.) - **State is remembered, not guessed.** Each screen reopens exactly as it was left, and each part of it keeps its own memory - the converter's categories each keep their value, unit and scroll position. When something is unknown, the honest default (the top of a list, a blank field) beats a plausible reconstruction. (Rejected: carrying a number across categories, so 98.6 km became 98.6 kg.) - **Stable layouts are an interface.** Fixed order, things highlighted in place rather than removed, so that where something is on screen is worth remembering. - **Look before designing.** The first build was the TUI on glass; every good decision since came from reacting to something running, usually against a concrete reference (NCalc) with taps counted. The Android app uses a fundamentally different interaction model from the TUI. Where the TUI is keyboard-driven with a prompt, Android is **touch-first with purpose-built input surfaces** for each mode. No text-cursor-in-a-prompt paradigm - instead, tappable buttons, interactive grids, and form fields. ### 9.1 Navigation & Shell **Built: a hamburger drawer, as in NCalc.** Calculator, Convert, and Settings below a divider, under the app name and the engine version (which crossed JNI to be there). Opened by the hamburger only; an edge swipe would fight the system back gesture and the keys nearest the edge. Each screen also has a one-tap link to the other in its top bar, because the drawer is two taps and switching between calculating and converting is the common move. The app reopens on whichever was last open; Settings is never reopened. **Settings** holds one thing so far: the theme - follow the device (the default), light, or dark. The choice is saved, and the system bar icons follow the app's choice rather than the device's. The palettes are Material's baseline light and dark schemes, not the system's dynamic colours: those were tried and, on the test device, gave the keypad's accent bands light containers in dark mode. The original plan, kept for the record: a bottom navigation bar with 4 destinations, **Standard**, **Programmer**, **Financial**, **Convert**. Programmer and Financial are not built, and will be drawer entries when they are. ``` ┌─────────────────────────────────────────┐ │ ┌─────────────────────────────────┐ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ Mode Content Area │ │ │ │ │ │ │ └─────────────────────────────────┘ │ │ │ │ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ │ │ 🔢 Standard 💻 Programmer 💰 Finance 🔄 Convert │ └─────────────────────────────────────────┘ ``` ### 9.2 Standard Calculator Screen **Decided after the first build, and built.** Touch-first: the keypad is the input, the system keyboard is on request, and the answer is visible before `=` is pressed. The layout follows NCalc (NCalcLibre on F-Droid), which is the reference for "what this should feel like": a display card over a pad, a scientific block on an accent band above the digits, and the rarer functions on a panel that slides up over the numbers. ``` +-----------------------------------------+ | Tally History | <- the only chrome | | | x / 3 + 1| | <- expression, large, with a cursor; | = 4.2255e29 (dim) | operators drawn as glyphs |-----------------------------------------| | sin cos tan ln log sqrt | <- scientific block, accent band | ( ) ^ x^2 n! e | | x A B , mod abc | |-----------------------------------------| | 7 8 9 CLR > │ROL │ │ ← bitwise op buttons │ ├────┼────┼────┼────┼────┼────┼────┤ │ │ │ A │ B │ C │ D │ E │ F │ │ │ ← hex input │ ├────┼────┼────┼────┼────┼────┤ │ │ │ │ 7 │ 8 │ 9 │ 0x│ 0b│CLR │ │ │ ← digits + base prefix │ ├────┼────┼────┼────┼────┼────┤ │ │ │ │ 4 │ 5 │ 6 │ + │ - │ = │ │ │ │ ├────┼────┼────┼────┼────┼────┤ │ │ │ │ 1 │ 2 │ 3 │ × │ ÷ │ ⌫ │ │ │ │ └────┴────┴────┴────┴────┴────┘ │ │ └─────────────────────────────────────────┘ ``` **Key interactions:** - Tap any bit in the grid to toggle it - all displays update instantly - Haptic pulse on bit toggle - Tap DEC/HEX/OCT/BIN label to make that the primary input base - Bit grid scrolls horizontally for 64-bit (or collapses to 4 rows of 16) - FAB or toolbar button for "Struct Layout" sub-screen ### 9.4 Struct Layout Screen (Programmer sub-screen) Accessed via a button within Programmer mode. Uses a **form-based struct builder** rather than raw text DSL (though raw text input is available via a toggle). ``` ┌─────────────────────────────────────────┐ │ ← Back to Programmer │ │ │ │ ┌─── ABI / Settings ──────────────┐ │ │ │ ABI: [x86-64 SysV ▾] Endian: [LE ▾]│ │ └──────────────────────────────────┘ │ │ │ │ ┌─── Fields ───────────────────────┐ │ │ │ ┌────────┬──────────┬─────────┐ │ │ │ │ │ Type ▾ │ Name │ ⊖ │ │ │ ← each row is a field │ │ ├────────┼──────────┼─────────┤ │ │ │ │ │ u32 │ x │ ⊖ │ │ │ │ │ │ u8 │ flags │ ⊖ │ │ │ │ │ │ u16 │ id │ ⊖ │ │ │ │ │ │ u64 │ ts │ ⊖ │ │ │ │ │ └────────┴──────────┴─────────┘ │ │ │ │ [ + Add Field ] │ │ │ │ [ ✏️ Raw DSL input toggle ] │ │ │ └──────────────────────────────────┘ │ │ │ │ ┌─── Memory Map ───────────────────┐ │ │ │ ██████████ ▓▓ ░░ ▒▒▒▒ ░░░░░░░░░ │ │ ← color-coded byte bar │ │ x(4) fl p id ts(8) │ │ ← labels below │ └──────────────────────────────────┘ │ │ │ │ ┌─── Summary ──────────────────────┐ │ │ │ Total: 16 bytes Align: 8 │ │ │ │ Padding: 1 byte (6.25%) │ │ │ │ Packed: 15 bytes │ │ │ └──────────────────────────────────┘ │ └─────────────────────────────────────────┘ ``` **Key interactions:** - Type dropdown for each field (Material exposed dropdown menu) - Swipe-to-delete or tap ⊖ to remove a field - Drag handles to reorder fields (see padding change in real-time) - Memory map is a custom Canvas composable with tappable segments (tap a segment -> highlights field info) - Toggle for raw DSL text input (for copy-paste from code) - Share button: export struct layout as text or image ### 9.5 Financial Mode Screen Card-based interface with function selector at top. ``` ┌─────────────────────────────────────────┐ │ ┌─── Function ────────────────────┐ │ │ │ [●CAGR] [TVM] [Compound] [PV] │ │ ← scrollable chip row │ └─────────────────────────────────┘ │ │ │ │ ┌─── CAGR Inputs ────────────────┐ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ Start Value │ │ │ │ ┌─────────────────────────┐ │ │ │ │ │ 10,000 │ │ │ ← text field │ │ └─────────────────────────┘ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ End Value │ │ │ │ ┌─────────────────────────┐ │ │ │ │ │ 25,000 │ │ │ │ │ └─────────────────────────┘ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ Periods (years) │ │ │ │ ┌─────────────────────────┐ │ │ │ │ │ 5 │ │ │ │ │ └─────────────────────────┘ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ [ Calculate ] │ │ │ └─────────────────────────────────┘ │ │ │ │ ┌─── Result ─────────────────────┐ │ │ │ CAGR = 20.11% │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ Formula: │ │ │ │ (25000/10000)^(1/5) - 1 │ │ │ │ = 2.5^0.2 - 1 │ │ │ │ = 0.2011... │ │ │ └─────────────────────────────────┘ │ └─────────────────────────────────────────┘ ``` **Key interactions:** - Chip row selects function type, input form adapts - For TVM: 5 input fields, user leaves one blank -> that's the solve target - Compute triggers engine call, result animates in - Result card shows formula breakdown (expandable) - Long-press result to copy ### 9.6 Convert Screen **Decided and built, against NCalc's.** NCalc makes a temperature conversion cost four steps before a digit: Unit Converter, Temperature, the input unit, then the number - and it starts at the converter list every time it opens. The goal here is the opposite: the common case costs no navigation at all. ``` +-----------------------------------------+ | = Convert Calculator | | [Search] [Temperature] [Length] [Mass]..| <- search tile that never moves, then | [ 37 C ] [180 mi] | EVERY category, most recent first | [37] [C v] | <- the value (highlighted = the next |-----------------------------------------| digit replaces it); the unit picker | C Celsius 37 | <- highlighted in place | F Fahrenheit 98.6 | <- every unit of the category, in a | K Kelvin 310.15 | FIXED order: tap a row to view from | R Rankine 558.27 | it, long-press to copy |-----------------------------------------| | 7 8 9 ... }`): the CLI adds `error: ` and a newline, the TUI adds `error: `, and a view with better context can override individual cases, as the financial form does for `DomainError`. Each frontend used to carry its own copy of the whole table, and the TUI's had drifted three errors behind. --- ## 11. Key Design Decisions | # | Decision | Rationale | |---|----------|-----------| | 1 | Pratt parser over recursive descent | Easier to extend precedence levels; cleaner for infix with mixed prefix operators | | 2 | `u128` storage for all programmer integers | One representation for every width; `width` masks and interprets rather than deciding storage, which is what makes the width a non-destructive display lens (8.2.1). This said `u64` until 128-bit support landed | | 3 | JSON over C ABI boundary | Avoids complex struct marshaling; Kotlin/Swift handle JSON natively; small perf cost acceptable for calculator. Still the plan; not built (section 6) | | 4 | Separate parser for struct DSL | Struct grammar is different enough from expressions; keeps both parsers simple. Not built (section 3) | | 5 | ABI as interface/vtable | Adding Windows x64 or ARM is implementing one struct; no changes to layout algorithm. Not built (section 3) | | 6 | libvaxis for TUI | Most mature Zig TUI; supports Windows/Mac/Linux; active development; used by Ghostty | | 7 | `^` always means power; XOR is the `xor` keyword | Avoids mode-dependent operator overloading; every operator means the same thing in both modes; consistent with existing `rol`/`ror` keyword operators | | 8 | Statically-linked desktop binaries | Zero dependencies for end user; Zig makes this trivial | | 9 | Unit conversion via base-unit normalization | Simple to implement, easy to extend; only temperature needs special case (offset) | | 10 | Android: button grids, not text prompts | Touch-first UX; no keyboard needed for basic use; purpose-built surfaces per mode beat a generic expression prompt. Not built (section 9) | | 11 | Android: form-based struct builder + raw toggle | Most users won't want to type DSL syntax on a phone; visual builder is more natural; power users can toggle to raw text. Not built | | 12 | Android: live conversion without "Calculate" button | Conversions are instant; eliminating a tap makes the UX feel responsive and direct. Not built | | 13 | Display budgets belong to the frontend, not the engine | A terminal, a clipboard and a phone screen want different digit counts, so `Number.render` takes `FormatOptions` and each frontend declares its own (NFR-9.9). The engine held these constants once and the CLI inherited a budget chosen for the TUI | | 14 | One list per shared vocabulary, derived where possible | The financial function list, the general function list, the error wording and the mode tab order each exist once and are rendered by whoever needs them. Every one of these was a duplicated list first, and every duplicate had drifted by the time it was found |