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Subject: Re: [boost] Geometry and spatial indexes, my opinion
From: Simonson, Lucanus J (lucanus.j.simonson_at_[hidden])
Date: 2008-10-09 15:30:31


Brandon wrote:
>I agree that this is certainly similar to what I have and that it is
very
>good. There is however a distinction in that the access traits in my
design
>are separate from the general point traits. I think that this is an
>important distinction. When you strip a basic point in N dimensions
from >any
>nomenclature, you essentially have a data structure that can be
describing >a
>location in any coordinate frame of dimension N. It is only through
>choosing
>a coordinate frame that the dimensions of the point takes on meaning
(well,
>strictly speaking this isn't true... I have a text that speaks quite
highly
>of coordinate free geometry..). This is why I have created access
traits
>which are aligned with a particular coordinate frame. It gives me the
means
>to have a legacy point type (which uses a particular framework, polar
>coordinates) which can then automatically work in an algorithm which
>requires Cartesian coordinates. By specializing an access traits type
for
>the legacy point, I can make all required transformations from r, theta
to
>x,y without doing any explicit translations to the underlying point
type.
>The result is that I can put my polar points in and still use all these

>great algorithms which require Cartesian coordinates. Also any outputs
or
>modifications to inputs are automatically written back in polar
coordinates
>due to the same interface (via the construct method of the access
traits.)

My point traits above are implicitly for 2D Cartesian points. You could
specialize it to access a 2D polar coordinate point data type and it
would work similar to what you describe. I don't provide direct access
to the underlying x and y values, so they can be converted to and from
whatever the point does store in the accessor functions. I don't have
an N dimensional point concept in my library because I didn't see a need
for such. If I did, I might very well have come up with a design
similar to yours or what Barend is going to show us soon. I'm not
opposed to n-dimensional points, I just don't have any use for them,
personally.

Luke


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