Re: [boost] Summer of Code 2008 Ideas

From: Bruno Lalande (bruno.lalande_at_[hidden])
Date: 2008-03-05 09:53:39

>
> Something that I miss very much is library for
> multidimensional/spatial data structures.
>

I strongly agree with this too. I often develop libraries that are related
to 3D geometry, and I always end up regretting that there doesn't exist any
somehow "standard" spatial data structure that wouldn't be related to any
particular implementation or product. As a consequence it's very difficult
in this domain to deliver libraries that are really portable and easily
integrable.

As we're talking about geometry, I have an idea to propose, that came to my
mind a couple of times. It would be to have a Boost library that portably
handles 3D hardware acceleration capabilities by wrapping the most widely
used implementations (I obviously think about OpenGL and Direct3D). I
already saw some discussions about this need on the Boost mailing lists and
it's a strong need for me too. The two main interests would be : abstracting
the different implementations, and bringing the powerfulness of C++ to those
C APIs. Unfortunately this proposal breaks one of the requirements of Boost:
no dependency upon any external library. A wrapper obviously depends on what
it wraps... so I guess this idea has little chance to be accepted.

Bruno