Re: [boost] [rfc] A light weight statically typed matrix template class (again?)

From: Andreas Harnack (ah.boost.04_at_[hidden])
Date: 2007-12-10 16:31:21

Larry Evans schrieb:
> On 12/07/07 19:14, Larry Evans wrote:
>> On 12/07/07 11:05, Larry Evans wrote:
>> [snip]

Hi Larry,

I'm sorry it took some time for me to answer, but I'm sure you 
know what a deadline is. :-) Anyway, thanks a lot for all your 
efforts; I'm afraid, however, I don't quite know what you're 
aiming at. As I understand you want to extend the concept of the 
matrix as a two dimensional array to that of a multi dimensional 
array, assuming that they follow the same principles? That 
sounds interesting, though I'm not sure that's sensible. I'm 
aiming at simplicity. A matrix is a very simple mathematical 
concept that can be useful in many situations, yet there's no 
data type supporting it adequately (whatever that means) in C++; 
All that's available (well, actually it's quite a lot) are 
fully-fledged libraries that apparently all are aiming to high 
level scientific computing. Tensors seem even more advanced to me.

I do plan indeed to add a more template parameters, first and 
foremost to allow to specify special matrix forms, like diagonal 
matrices, which have some special properties, that might be 
interesting to the user. Different storage models might 
interesting too.

I'm not yet sure how deal with variable sized matrices (or 
rather whether to deal with them at all). They certainly will be 
important for some people, but would come at the price to give 
up compile time size checking.

Andreas