Re: [boost] Formal Review for Interval Library (was: IntervalLibraryreminder)

From: Joerg Walter (jhr.walter_at_[hidden])
Date: 2002-09-08 01:50:19

----- Original Message -----
From: "Gabriel Dos Reis" <gdr_at_[hidden]>
To: <boost_at_[hidden]>
Sent: Saturday, September 07, 2002 11:19 PM
Subject: Re: [boost] Formal Review for Interval Library (was:
IntervalLibraryreminder)

> jhr.walter_at_[hidden] (Joerg Walter) writes:
>
> [...]
>
> | > Note that for intervals, it was a question at some point whether we
> | > should provide specializations for T==float, double and long double,
> | > with additional implicit conversions for float->double->long double.
> | > For those ones, we can guarantee at least that there is no loss of
> | > precision.
> |
> | Implicit conversion may be one way to go. Another way could be to use
type
> | promotion traits as described by Todd Veldhuizen for example here:
> |
> | http://osl.iu.edu/~tveldhui/papers/techniques/techniques01.html#l30
>
> I think Hervé is quite fluent in template metaprogramming and its
> basics (after all, he significantly contributed to CGAL :-).

Yes, I noticed this recently.

The reason to include the link was, that I mentioned promote traits in
another posting already and got no feedback.

> IMHO, the issue is more about the usefulness of the implicit type
> conversion in the scope of interval arithmetic, compared to the
> interface complication.

Are you talking about a possible interface complication when using
promote_traits? If yes, then I'm not sure how such an interface change would
be visible for a user (apart from the fact, that he could use mixed
precision operations then ;-).

Regards

Joerg