Re: [boost] interest on a geometry library

From: rodolfo_at_[hidden]
Date: 2006-03-17 14:35:40

On Fri, Mar 17, 2006 at 10:27:00AM -0800, Geoffrey Irving wrote:
> It would be better to have a set of nonvirtual classes defining functions
> like this inline, and then have a template wrapper class to convert one of
> these into a descendant of the virtual class.  This way, someone who wants
> to use a million spheres (e.g., for a sphere hierarchy), won't suffer from
> virtual function overhead.

You are right about considering inlining, I'll try to come up a way to
have two interfaces, one easily inlined and another virtual, because
sometimes is important to have some kind of polymorphism, ie, container
of base pointers.

> You should probably think carefully about which basic types to use here,
> especially in terms of small vectors types.  I'm not sure if boost has a
> small vector type yet (I didn't see one in uBLAS), but if so it should
> definitely be used.

You mean to use small vector to generalize each primitive to n
dimensions, right? My only objection is that it would complicate the
(for me) basic usage, i.e., 2d (and hopefully 3d) usage. For instance:
 point_t<double> pt;
 pt.x = 6.0;
 pt.y = 3;

 or

 rect_t<double> rc;
 rc.bottom = rc.right = 3;
 rc.topleft() = point_t<double>(4,5);

I would not like to lose that. A more generic way would be:
  point_t<double, 2> pt; // 2 dimensions
  pt[0] = 6.0;
  pt[1] = 4;

  or whatever..., but for me the first option is preferable. But
  I'm open to new ideas.

------------
Rodolfo Lima

        

        
                
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