Re: [boost] [gsoc] Proposal - Boost.Matrix - DRAFT RFC

Subject: Re: [boost] [gsoc] Proposal - Boost.Matrix - DRAFT RFC
From: Patrick Mihelich (patrick.mihelich_at_[hidden])
Date: 2009-04-01 01:25:23

>
> I'd suggest using Rows and Cols as arguments of the template instead of M
> and N.

I agree.

> IMO the abstraction provided by a template <typename T,size_t
> Rows,size_t Cols> class matrix is unnecessary and will only get in the
> way for computer graphics applications. I've seen several attempts
> like this at generalizing matrices for game engine use getting
> scrapped and refactored to a more traditional set of types (not
> templates) and functions (this doesn't mean that such generalizations
> are not appropriate in general.)
>

And maybe it's not surprising that these attempts failed. It's not that easy
to get the generalization exactly right. In a production environment it
makes sense to just write some ad-hoc types rather than spend months on the
perfect matrix class; but I do expect this sort of care in a Boost library.
Anyway I personally could care less about computer graphics, fixed-size
matrices are also useful in computer vision, robotics, and no doubt other
domains.

Kornel's application looks quite good to me; it would be terrific to see
some real review-ready code come out of this.

-Patrick