Least anyone think I have abandoned this, I just want to give a brief update:
I've started trying to create a units.spad.pamphlet file, but as yet I've not written any actual code - I'm trying to set up the structure of the latex document itself and provide a useful background on units, dimensions, and issues surrounding them. This is not strictly speaking useful to the Axiom implementation part of this discussion, but has proven very educational for me about units, measurement, and standards :-). I figure this is the moral equalevent of documenting algorithms and domains in normal Axiom usage, so I'll try to cram in all the potentially important information. I suspect what I'll wind up with might be overkill, but it can always be trimmed down. I'm trying to lay things out overall along the lines which have evolved from the previous discussions, but those discussions printed out are well over 60 pages so it's a lot to go through. I'm going to add a couple sections to the document that initially won't see much (if any) work, as they are parts William disliked (ways to make units populate the top level namespace, Reverse Dimensional Analysis, user level tools for a MyUnits environment, etc.) and aren't necessary to the core functionality in any case. Right now, I'm just trying to define terms, document the reasoning behind design decisions, find and cite useful and important sources like the NIST definition documents, and generally get set up so the nitty gritty implementation details have a framework to go in. My first cut will probably not be very good, but at least it will be something to tear apart and redo. Once I've reached a stage where it might be of interest to someone I'll be glad to post it. I may throw in a little code attempting to do something like define the top level Category, but it will almost certainly be completely wrong the first time around ;-). Anyway, just wanted to let everyone know I hadn't lost interest. (Real life can get rather annoying at times, too - jobs sure can eat up time :-/.) Thought we'd get more comment (other than from me anyway) on William's overall design ideas - maybe we got too longwinded and lost the audience? ;-) Cheers, CY _______________________________________________ Axiom-developer mailing list [email protected] http://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/axiom-developer
