Re: [boost] gsoc project

Subject: Re: [boost] gsoc project
From: Paul A. Bristow (pbristow_at_[hidden])
Date: 2011-03-31 07:10:12

> -----Original Message-----
> From: boost-bounces_at_[hidden] [mailto:boost-bounces_at_[hidden]]
> On Behalf Of Scott McMurray
> Sent: Thursday, March 31, 2011 1:34 AM
> To: boost_at_[hidden]
> Subject: Re: [boost] gsoc project
> 
> On Wed, Mar 30, 2011 at 09:57, Paul A. Bristow <pbristow_at_[hidden]>
> wrote:
> >
> > But there are *some* similarities between the two.
> > (Often you feed a string and you get a 'check' be it a single 4 bit
> > digit, or a loadsabits digest?).
> >
> 
> Conceptually, I agree.
> 
> But since the point of check digits is to find human-entry errors, the trade-offs
> and practical issues are totally different.
> 
> For example, they only make sense for things short enough that a human would
> be willing to type, so having an interface that encourages sequentially providing
> 4-KiB blocks of unsigned chars makes no sense.
> 
> Similarly, a human has provided it manually, so passing it as a wstring is a
> reasonable, performance-mostly-unimportant thing to do, compared to how
> long it took the user to type it.  Especially since the checker might need to
> consider whether the ISBN-10 was entered with 'X', 'x', 'х' (Cyrillic ha), 'Ｘ'
> (fullwidth), or 'ｘ' (fullwidth).

No disagreement here (though some will also want to use the check on machine written files/databases).

I'm sure anyone who does this project will be tapping your expertise on this area.

Paul

---
Paul A. Bristow,
Prizet Farmhouse, Kendal LA8 8AB  UK
[phone]  07714330204
pbristow_at_[hidden]