Two short questions about calc

[Michael Heerdegen <michael_heerdegen@web.de>]

Hi,

I've now decided to learn a bit more about Calc so I can use it as my
daily calculator.  Now I have these two questions:

(1) In my init file I set calc-symbolic-mode -> t and calc-prefer-frac >
t because I prefer that most of the time.  Because, hey, I can always
use N to see the numeric value.  But eh - no, actually, this doesn't
work if the result can be interpreted as a fraction.  Even if I convert
a natural number of milliseconds to min+s, calc presents me the result
as a fraction (of course the denominator is not a power of ten most of
the time), and N doesn't work then, I must use another command to get
the numerical value of the fraction.  That, well, is that a question?
It's annoying.  Don't want to need to remember two commands for the same
task.  Why isn't there a command that just gives me the numerical value
of ... anything?

(2) I have also configured Calc to use big mode for output.  There is
also a mode for tex output.  If we already have tex, could we not just
... tex that and insert the picture into the output buffer?  I'm sure
that would break something, but it would be cool I guess (and waste less
space).  Somebody has tried this?  A key to toggle picture vs. normal
output would be nice to have.


Thanks,

Michael.