bug#27765: 26.0.50; Calc b% and relch are inconsistent in algebraic and rpn modes

[Mattias Engdegård]

3 sep. 2021 kl. 10.12 skrev Lars Ingebrigtsen <larsi@gnus.org>:

> But perhaps others have other opinions; I've added Mattias to the CCs --
> perhaps he has some comments.

I'm afraid I have nothing clever to say about it. It seems understandable that 
`relch`, or `calcFunc-relch` in Lisp, follows the convention of just returning 
the value and not concern itself with its presentation. `b%` is an interactive 
command and therefore may take an interest in how the result is presented to 
the user. A weak argument, but perhaps it makes some sort of sense.

I have no idea what would break if we changed `calcFunc-relch` to return 
something like `(calcFunc-percent 25)` instead of 0.25. Maybe it just works.

Regarding the uniform display of percentages in org-mode: spreadsheet 
applications tend to use formatting of cells or columns when a certain 
presentation (like percentage or a certain number of decimals) is desirable. On 
the other hand, some functions in popular spreadsheets do return values adorned 
with a presentation hint; this is the case for financial functions that compute 
interest, for example.

Maybe Calc assumes that someone who uses b% is a HP-12C type of person and 
wants a percentage, while those using algebraic mode get plain values.