On 2005-01-30, Andy Little <andy@servocomm.freeserve.co.uk> wrote:
"Phil Richards" <news@derived-software.ltd.uk> wrote in message news:20050129141037.DE6D0E305@derisoft.derived-software.demon.co.uk... [wrt dimensional analysis being independent from units]
Indeed it does. I use one every day... we don't care about unit conversions because we don't do any. I would hope that a general purpose physical quantities lib would deal with units, even if you dont use anything but the base units. The Mars lander crash and all that. IOW you need to be explicit about what units you are using.
Yes, but I think what is being raised is that a "physical quantities library" and a "dimensional analysis library" don't have to be the same thing. The latter is a much simpler proposition, and, for many people is all that they want. It's all we need because *all* our interfaces to the outside world are defined entirely in terms of SI units. We make unit conversion an SEP[*]. (Yes, there is an optional bolt-on that supports unit conversion, but we don't need to use it so we don't.) phil [*] somebody else's problem -- change name before "@" to "phil" for email