Hi Jim. > This sounds good. > > Along the lines of what you are proposing, it may help to use words > like > "infinitely thin" and then come up with some intuitive word (or maybe > a > pair of words?) that we can use both in the case of talking about how > a > Stroke turns a path into a stroked shape and also how the filling and > containment methods turn it into an arbiter of points inside or > outside > the shape. It couldn't hurt to say that every shape divides the plane > into 2 sets of points, one inside and the other outside, or something > like that.
Ok. I'll write something up and send you a webrev. > Perhaps the problem is less with the word "boundary" than it > is with confusing our use of the word inside to describe the > concept of filling and containment with the topological concept > that a set has an interior in addition to (and mostly separate from) > its boundary? That was exactly the problem. We classify every point as either inside or outside, and I'm used to the interior, exterior, and boundary being disjoint. Regards, Denis. ----- Original Message ----- > Hi Denis, > > On 1/12/2011 8:35 AM, Denis Lila wrote: > >> There is another bug out there where I've indicated the need to > >> beef > >> up our documentation of the intersection methods (see 7003516). > > > > I like the ideas in the evaluation, especially about the links to > > the > > "Definition of insideness" in the Shape docs. What confused me > > in the documentation, even after I had read the "Definition of > > insideness", was that the wording is not very consistent. For > > example > > contains(Point) says "...inside the boundary of the Shape." The > > "Definition of insideness" says "lie *inside a Shape* if and only > > if" > > So we have "inside a Shape" and "inside the boundary of the Shape". > > This creates the impression that they are referring to two different > > things. That's why I was confused about whether "inside the > > boundary" > > included the boundary or not. > > > > What made it even more confusing was just the usage of the word > > "boundary" > > itself, especially when combined with the usage of "interior" in the > > intersects() docs. I'm used to "boundary" and "interior" being > > defined > > like so: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boundary_%28topology%29, > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interior_%28topology%29 > > but in Shape we use a different definition which classifies every > > point in the plane as either inside or outside the shape, so in > > some sense, the boundary doesn't even exist in our case. So I > > propose > > that we remove every use of the word "boundary", and replace every > > use of "interior" with "inside"+ a link to the "Definition of > > insideness" > > in awt.Shape. That will make it perfectly clear what we mean by > > "inside" > > and people who have studied a bit of topology won't be confused ;-) > > > Note that the definition of insideness does allow that there are > points > that are on the boundary - in fact most of its words are how to > disambiguate whether those points are inside or outside. In our case we > accept half(ish) of the boundary into "inside" and half(ish) into > "outside". In topology there are 3 states - interior, boundary, and > exterior... > > ...jim
