Re: [boost] Ann: Floating Point Utilities Review starts today

From: Johan Råde (rade_at_[hidden])
Date: 2008-02-27 05:25:53

John Maddock wrote:
> John Phillips wrote:
>>    Sorry for miss-naming and calling the Math Toolkit by the incorrect
>> MathTools,
> 
> No worries :-)
> 
>> but the basis for my concern that they will be merged is
>> from
>> the review announcement, where John Maddock says:
> 
> The intention (at least on my part) is to merge the implementations so that 
> we don't end up with two different versions(!), and so that we get the best 
> of both worlds: the genericity of the current Boost.Math version (works to a 
> degree with numbers represented as class types), and the performance of 
> Johan's version for the builtin floating point types.
> 
> How the library and documentation should be structured is a whole other 
> issue - thanks for raising this - I think you're correct that these 
> utilities should be easy to find and at the very least flagged up on the 
> library index page.
> 
> I'm open to suggestions as to whether that means separate documentation and 
> organisation, or just a separate index entry leading to the sub-TOC for 
> fpclassify etc.  There are pro's and cons either way, so I'm easy I guess.
> 
> John. 

I agree with John.

I think the floating point classification and signbitfunctions should be made a subentry of 
Boost.Math but not of Boost.Math.SpecialFunctions.
"Special functions" is a mathematical term, that, although not precisely defined,
usually refers to certain classes of analytical functions.
The phrase "Special functions" as used by mathematicians do not include floating point 
classification functions.

Where should the facets go? The same place?

--Johan