On Fri, 11 Nov 2005, Jonathan Lang wrote:
That wasn't the intent; the intent was to define a "something-or-other" C<complex> that represents the fact that whatever does this sometimes behaves like a complexRectilinear and other times behaves like a complexPolar. Even the underlying information (the attributes involved) may vary from role to role, though what those attributes represent ought to be the same regardless of which role is in use.
I must say that I didn't follow the discussion very much. But this makes me think of this too: the two representations are handy for different calculations. It would be nice if they somehow declared what they can do better (or at all) and have the "union" take care of which one's methods to use.
In another situation, one may implement a system for doing integer arithmetics say in base twelve, and in this case one may have an "union" to decide to use its .division() method to perform division by three, possibly holding a flag telling that the most accurate status is that held in it.
Michele -- Caro Bongo questa ? la civilt?: hai tutto quello che non vuoi, quando non ti serve. - "Toto' Tarzan"
