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

From: Steven Youngs (steve_at_[hidden])
Date: 2001-08-31 03:24:39

----- Original Message -----
From: "Kevlin Henney" <kevlin_at_[hidden]>
To: <boost_at_[hidden]>
Sent: Friday, August 31, 2001 8:51 AM
Subject: [boost] Re: Re: Re: Re: quantity libraries

[ lots of good comments from Kevlin cut ]

>
> My preference is for 3, but I would be interested to know if anyone is
> working with an application that would benefit significantly from
> supporting two different underlying representations in the same program
> at the same time.
>

In some applications (CAD & CAM come to mind as these are the problem area I
develop in) it is common to have different parts of the same application
working in different units. As an example, the US car giants often
sub-contract work across the border to Canada. Historically, the US
companies supplied English (inch) data to the Canadian companies who,
typically, worked in metric (mm in this case). So we have an inch
denominated input file read into the application which is displaying mm
denominated units to the user. When the user completes their work the output
is, once again, inch denominated. This is all within the same application.

As an aside: none of our UK customers uses inch (English) data any more and
even Microsoft Windows defaults to metric when configured for English
(United Kingdom) regional settings.

[ further comments from Kevlin cut ]

Steve.
--
Steven Youngs
NC Graphics Ltd.