Re: [boost] Geometry and spatial indexes, my opinion

Subject: Re: [boost] Geometry and spatial indexes, my opinion
From: Bruno Lalande (bruno.lalande_at_[hidden])
Date: 2008-10-08 17:55:45

Hello,

>> Ok, I take your point. I wasn't suggesting that a library not be able to
>> handle more than 3 dimensions. Rather I would suggest that the population of
>> developers who have such requirements must be very small. Considering that
>> generalization on dimension is not trivial for many algorithms, this leads
>> me to the conclusion that the specific algorithms will decide the
>> requirements on their inputs. This is why I chose a traits based interface
>> for the geometry library I've been implementing. There's nothing to stop one
>> from creating a multi-dimensional Cartesian/polar/parametric access traits
>> interface for any algorithm which requires it. So I suppose I agree, the
>> geometry library should not constrain on the number of dimensions. But I
>> don't agree with full agnosticism (to mean agnosticism of coordinate frame
>> as well.) There should be a way to differentiate points further to align
>> with the concrete traits of the dimension they describe.
>
>
> This sounds reasonable. Certainly there are many 2D/3D algorithms for which
> there is little point in generalizing to higher dimensions.

But it's not a reason to limit the point concept to 2D/3D. Once you
have your points defined dimension-agnosticly (which was really not a
big deal compared to some other problems we had when defining our
points...), nothing prevents you from writing an algorithm that will
only work with a precise dimension because it doesn't make sense for
the other ones. Let's take the cross product. Every 3D programmer use
it, and it has a sense only in 3D even if it can be generalized with
wedge product. Well your cross_product() function will just have to do
a BOOST_STATIC_ASSERT to ensure your passing it a 3D point, and will
let the rest of the algorithms be dimension agnostic.

Bruno