Re: [boost] [Review][PQS] Review deadline

From: Michael Fawcett (michael.fawcett_at_[hidden])
Date: 2006-06-08 13:29:09

On 6/8/06, Andy Little <andy_at_[hidden]> wrote:
> Hi Michael,
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Michael Fawcett [mailto:michael.fawcett_at_[hidden]]
> > Sent: 08 June 2006 15:49
> > To: andy_at_[hidden]
> > Subject: Re: [boost] [Review][PQS] Review deadline
>
> > > A goal of pqs is to be useable in that sort of situation. To be
> > really effective
> > > it will need a lot of supporting classes ( matrix, vector, quat) though.
> >
> > Did you plan on using Boost::uBLAS for this, along with
> > Boost::quaternion?  This seemed tangential enough to the PQS
> > discussions that I didn't want to clutter up the mailing list, but I
> > am defeinitely curious.
>
> FWIW Its extremely important. I think it would be worth  asking on the list.
> I dont think many people realise! I have discussed it in various replies but
> no one has asked me the direct question:
>
> Neither of those libraries above will work with other than numeric types
> AFAIK. IOW where T is a type (simplifying and ignoring e.g floating point
> promotion etc), it must satisfy:
>
> T result = T() + T();
> T result = T() * T();
>
> (among others)
>
> If T is a physical quantity, the second requirement never can be true.
> Quantity Compatible library must be written something like:
>
> Where Op is  +,-,*,/, ==, etc ...
>
> typeof( T1() Op T1() ) result =  T1() Op T2();

This was a private e-mail discussion but Andy thought it important to
be bruoght up on the list.  FWIW, my own current
matrix/vector/quaternion code does what you are asking for (with
boost's help), but I had been looking at changing all my stuff over to
uBLAS/quaternion for some time.  As an example:

blas::vec3<float> a(1, 0, 0);
blas::vec3<double> b(0, 1, 0);
blas::vec3<double> result = cross_product(a, b); // returns vec3<double>!

I accomplished this using what I think never became a boost library
(from the sandbox maybe? Did MPL::transform consume this
functionality?) result_of which was used something like:

template <typename LHS, typename RHS>
typename boost::result_of_plus<LHS, RHS>::type
        operator +(const LHS &lhs, const RHS &rhs)
{
        typename boost::result_of_plus<LHS, RHS>::type nrv(lhs);
        nrv += rhs;
        return nrv;
}

I would hope some solution could be found where you didn't have to
implement all new matrix/vector/quaternion classes and their
corresponding functionality, rather, just ensure the return type from
the operation follows normal promotion rules (this is actually what I
thought the promotion traits library was going to do).

--Michael Fawcett