Re: [boost] [units] Any interest in dimensional analysis for orientational dimensions and Euclidean vectors?

From: Matthias Schabel (boost_at_[hidden])
Date: 2007-03-09 13:31:54

> representation (i.e. a dimension). I just couldn't think of any
> other meaningful operation.

I believe that vector operator-(point,point) is sensible...

> space. You can add Kelvin to Kelvin and Celsius to Celsius, but
> you can't mix them. The corresponding results are either in

In this case, since the metric is degenerate, they can be implicitly
converted to one another if you're talking about temperature
differences.

> 293.15 Kelvin represent the same temperature as 20 degrees
> Celsius, but doubling both will lead to very different results.

If you mean 293.15K in absolute temperature, you're right. However,
doubling a temperature difference makes perfect sense in either
unit system.

> something entirely different. So I'd stick to offer a
> transformation between absolute temperatures.

But in most ways differences behave more like what we expect
when we use units. That is a length, for example, is really a
difference between the two endpoints of an object, etc...

Since people are likely to expect reasonable handling of both
absolute temperatures and temperature differences, we may
end up adding the absolute<> wrapper to the units library to
allow that intent to be indicated and caught. Relative values
are basically degenerate with bare value type and probably
don't need a special wrapper. Then the operations that need
to be supported are :

absolute<T> operator+(absolute<T>,T)
absolute<T> operator+(T,absolute<T>)
absolute<T> operator-(absolute<T>,T)
absolute<T> operator-(T,absolute<T>)
T operator-(absolute<T>,absolute<T>)

I think that's about it. You can't multiply absolute values by
scalars or add them to themselves, obviously. Of course,
this functionality certainly has relevance beyond the dimensional
analysis/units domain, but I don't know if it's possible to find
a sufficiently generic solution that meets every reasonable
need and is implementable...

Matthias