Dear Michael,

> This is my suggested change to the default handling of traits. This
> treats any
> unknown type as a scalar and defines a default traits definition. This should
> certainly be a lot easier for new users to use and simplify many cases.

This work is already done in the following (excluding the redundant member functions):

#include <limits>
#include <boost/call_traits.hpp>

Your model of scaler_traits is really a fat interface for a complex type, not for a generic scaler_trait.  
There is no need to include member functions like abs, etc, in a traits interface.    

Kind regards,
Andrew

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