Re: [boost] interest on a geometry library

From: Cliff Green (cliffg_at_[hidden])
Date: 2006-03-17 15:30:28

I assume you've seen and compared various geometry 
libraries - in particular CGAL is an excellent cutting 
edge computational geometry library (in many ways - C++ 
design techniques, overall functionality, "number kernel" 
architecture): http://www.cgal.org/

There's dozens of good geometry libraries available, so I 
think it's essential to have a well-written, focused 
rationale. Comparisons / contrasts with existing libraries 
would go a long way towards explaining what this library 
is trying to accomplish versus other libaries in similar 
domains. (Myself, I'd love to see a Boost level-of-quality 
library that supports geospatial concepts - latitude / 
longitude systems, coordinate reference systems, etc.) If 
you're aiming towards a Boost style version of Java's 
awt.geom package, that would be good to know.

As already mentioned, efficiency is crucial, since this 
domain will have applications that create and use millions 
(or billions) of geometrical objects. So keep abstract 
base classes to only essentials.

Others will have deeper and better recommendations, I'm 
sure ... :)

Cliff