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From: Dietmar Kuehl (dietmar.kuehl_at_[hidden])
Date: 1999-07-01 16:16:27


Hi,

Beman Dawes wrote:
>I never doubted that a timer implementation based on <ctime> isn't
>going to be very accurate on some platforms; the current
>implementation can be viewed as the default when nothing better is
>available.

I think this applies to everything available from the boost pages:
The main contribution is the interface which is augmented with an
implementation proofing that it is possiblet to implement the
corresponding class and providing a free implementation. At least
this is true for everything which depends more or less on platform
dependent features: On some platforms there may be a better timer,
the interfaces to the GUI will be different (if there is ever a GUI
library available from boost), the file system is accessed differently,
threads mechanisms differ, etc. Since the author of the original
submission cannot possible have access to all C++ implementation, it
is only logical, that platform specific parts can be added by people
working on those platforms. Correspondingly, for platform independent
stuff, the performance trade-offs my vary such that different
implementations could be reasonable even if the code is otherwise
completely platform independent.

The more interesting part in this is, how to exactly handle platform
specific stuff? Macros come to mind but isn't there something better?
I can imagine that eg. templates could also be used and might be more
convenient. A general approach for this would a great contribution,
IMO.

Dietmar

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