[boost] everything is [rational]

From: Andras Erdei (aerdei_at_[hidden])
Date: 2005-04-06 03:06:39

whenever we do arithmetic, we are doing some kind of rational arithmetic:

- integer arithmetic is rational arithmetic with all denominators equal to 1

- fixed point arithmetic is rational arithmetic with all denominators being a
  pre-specified constant

- floating point arithmetic is rational arithmetic with denominator values
  limited to powers of 2 (e.g. 1/3 is represented as 11184811/2^25)

- finite rational<> arithmetic is rational arithmetic with denominator values
  limited to a given range

the first three does rounding, so the rule of thumb "behave like int" suggests
rational<> should do the same. if we do not do rounding, we have to have some
very good reasons for not doing it.

br,
andras