>From pure calculation point of view, the radians have the convenience
of decimal base. Now a lot of people use degrees with decimal point,
but strictly speaking it is wrong - they should use circular minutes
and seconds to represent non-integer degrees.
That is why trigonometric functions in all books accept arguments in
radians. Nearby they have conversion tables from degrees into radians.
When I was in school it looked very stupid for me, but otherwise you
have to explain every time do you mean decimal degrees or minutes,
seconds, etc.
Historically radians were introduced much later than degrees and
mathematicians liked them more. French mathematicians tried to
changed definition of degrees to make it more decimal (after French
Revolution), but those attemps did not live long.
Jacob Nikom
"Casteel, Don" wrote:
>
> I don't know if I can agree with you. Actually I don't understand how
> degrees became so widely accepted, radians make a lot more sense to me.
>
> First: I don't find radians difficult to deal with at all.
> Second: I use a lot of math functions that need radians in my programs.
> Third: If you use radians exclusively they're not a problem at all.
>
> Changing things would only change the direction of conversion, not eliminate
> the need to convert.
>
> I suppose if someone wanted to re-write all of J3D they could overload all
> the methods dealing with angles and add an int to the arguments, this would
> keep existing programs compatible:
>
> someMethod(double radians){....};
>
> someMethod(double radians, int Class.USE_DEGREES){....};
>
> Food for thought anyway : )
>
> Don
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Hugh Fisher [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
> Sent: Sunday, March 26, 2000 7:40 PM
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: [JAVA3D] Lose the radians
>
> I sent this off to the java3d-comments email. I'd like
> to know if other people are as willing as I am to rewrite
> existing code if it means never having to convert between
> degrees and radians again.
>
> BUG: Java3D rotations are expressed in the internal
> format of radians rather than degrees.
>
> WORKAROUND: Programmers must use math routines to convert
> angles into the internal format before passing as arguments,
> and again on return values to generate meaningful output for
> the user interface or testing/debugging.
>
> FIX: All rototation-related classes such as transformations
> and quaternions should accept arguments, or return values,
> in degrees and keep the implementation format hidden.
>
> Radians may have nice mathematical properties, but these are
> only of interest to ... mathematicians. New programmers,
> experienced programmers, 3D artists, architects, geographers,
> etc all think in degrees. Exposing radians makes coding,
> testing, and debugging tedious. It makes it harder for
> lecturers to translate most textbook examples into computer
> code. (Quick: can gimbal lock occur after a rotation of 1.6707
> about an axis?)
>
> It will be easier to convert code from OpenGL, and easier for
> OGL programmers to switch to Java3D.
>
> A counter argument is that radians are already used in VRML.
> That was a mistake and should not be imitated. I have never
> read any VRML tutorial/introduction that did not apologise
> for the use of radians, with some comment along the lines of
> "You'll get used to it." We don't. No student in my 3D graphics
> course has ever expressed satisfaction that VRML uses radians
> instead of degrees, and all have been delighted to move on to
> coding in OpenGL where it no longer applies.
>
> Is this code incompatible with existing code? Yes, and I for
> one would gladly change my existing code if it meant that
> *every* future program would be simplified.
>
> Hugh Fisher
> ACSYS/CSIRO VE Lab
>
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