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From: Jaap Suter (J.Suter_at_[hidden])
Date: 2002-09-17 18:15:00


Hello,

I was wondering whether there would be any interest in a Geometric Algebra
library in the Boost community.

For those who don't know what Geometric Algebra is, I recommend taking a
quick look at these websites:

http://carol.wins.uva.nl/~leo/clifford/index.html
http://modelingnts.la.asu.edu/html/ComputationalGeometry.html

Or if you have some more time, take a look at the following papers:

http://www.science.uva.nl/~leo/clifford/dorst-mann-I.pdf
http://www.science.uva.nl/~leo/clifford/dorst-mann-II.pdf
http://carol.wins.uva.nl/~leo/clifford/sommer.pdf
http://modelingnts.la.asu.edu/pdf/OldWine.pdf
http://modelingnts.la.asu.edu/html/UAFCG.html

For those who do know what Geometric Algebra is; I have found a new method
of dealing with it, resulting in an implementation that is 3 to 10 times
faster than the current fastest implementation (Gaigen).

I'm heavily using the boost::mpl and template meta programming in general to
manipulate lists of grades resulting in _no_more_ (!) calculations than
necessary for any operation (geometric product, wedge, inner, contraction,
dual, reverse, etc. etc.).

This means that we get the full unifying elegance of geometric algebra,
without the efficiency drawbacks, because the compiler solves them for us.

Anyway, I'm currently wrapping it all up in a small paper which I could post
here or in the YahooGroups section if anybody is interested. If there's
enough interest I would love to make an initial Boostified version of the
library, after which those interested can start discussing the
design/naming/etc....

Then again, maybe nobody is interested....

Sincerely,

Jaap Suter


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