Re: [boost] Interval Library and comparison operators

From: Douglas Gregor (gregod_at_[hidden])
Date: 2002-09-06 11:22:54

On Friday 06 September 2002 11:31 am, David Bergman wrote:
> If we get that formal, we could not apply "equivalence", or virtually
> any of the terms we have used throughout this thread...

Precisely.

> I think we are better off with translating the arguments into the
> classical "true or false" world, in order to have nomenclature at all.

If the nomenclature doesn't apply in the 3-state world, why are decisions made 
using that nomenclature applied to the 3-state world? This logic just doesn't 
follow: Narrow the 3-state definition to 2 states; there isn't any proper 
equivalence relation, so the 3-state definition is not a good one.

I feel that this thread has gone way off-topic for this library. When 
designing a library, we are faced with the task of finding the best interface 
to suit the set of tasks the library is to be used for. The problem is 
two-fold: (1) we need to determine the set of tasks that can be solved with 
the library and (2) we need to construct an interface that fits well within 
the domains of these tasks.

However, in this thread we have wandered off into the question "What is a good 
semantics for interval relations?", which I would argue is irrelevant to 
library design. The related, relevant question we _should_ be answering is 
"What semantics for interval relations are needed in the application domains 
we want to support?" 

        Doug