Re: [boost] Re: Re: Re: quantity libraries

From: Anatoli Tubman (anatoli_at_[hidden])
Date: 2001-09-01 07:00:44

On Friday 31 August 2001 00:09, Ross Smith wrote:
> Anatoli Tubman wrote:
> > On Thursday 30 August 2001 17:48, Kevlin Henney wrote:
> > > The metre is a base unit not a derived unit.
> >
> > Oops! My bad.
> >
> > Still it is defined in terms of something else, so it's no
> > better than inch in this respect. Which is immaterial anyway.
> >
> > I'm still asking: given that different users want different
> > units, and it's possible to give everyone what they want without
> > harming anyone, why insist on a SI-only library?
>
> For exactly the same reason we insist on code that conforms to ISO 14882
> instead of taking advantage of assorted GNU/Microsoft/Sun/etc
> extensions. It's the _standard_.

Boost uses standard-confoming code for a reason. This reason is portability,
in particular portability to yet-unknown environments.

Likewise, people use SI units to make their numbers "portable" to yet-unknown
environments. If such portability is not required, which is often the case,
it is unwise to force upon people any particular system, international 
standard or not.

-- 
anatoli at ptc dot com -- opinions are mine