On Tue, 16 Sep 2008, jerry anning wrote: > Reading the manual, I see that several graphic tools, such as arc, expect > angles in radians, but others (:angle) take degrees. No big deal, but I > suggest that standardizing on degrees might not be a bad idea. As I > understand it, Hackety-Hack: the Re-enhackening will be based on Shoes and > telling them to use something like Math::PI / 4 is one of the fastest ways I > know to scare off youngsters and mathphobes and it is hard to teach someone > to program when they run away screaming.
For what it is worth, the Alice programming system http://www.alice.org/ decided to solve this particular problem by defining rotations ( using turn and roll rather than yaw, pitch and roll) in terms of a complete turn. So you get instructions like "Lunch Lady, turn right (1/4) turn". I suppose you could: class Object def degrees(x) x * Math::PI / 180.0 end def radians(x) x end end class Numeric def degrees self * Math::PI / 180.0 end def radians self end end so you could write degrees(5) + 5.degrees and similar stuff for turn, turns. Except turn may come up in strategy games as take a turn. Anyone ever use Grads, 400 of them to a full circle? Given the sets of measurements for {angle, temperature, time}, degrees, minutes and seconds are problematic... Only allow temperature in Kelvin and Celcius which, strictly speaking, are not in degrees, I understand? That's before we get started on MoTown artistes... Hugh
