DIP80: phobos additions

[John Colvin via Digitalmars-d]

On Saturday, 13 June 2015 at 10:35:55 UTC, Tofu Ninja wrote:
> On Saturday, 13 June 2015 at 08:45:20 UTC, John Colvin wrote:
>> The tiny subset of numerical linear algebra that is relevant 
>> for graphics (mostly very basic operations, 2,3 or 4 
>> dimensions) is not at all representative of the whole. The 
>> algorithms are different and the APIs are often necessarily 
>> different.
>>
>> Even just considering scale, no one sane calls in to BLAS to 
>> multiply a 3*3 matrix by a 3 element vector, simultaneously no 
>> one sane *doesn't* call in to BLAS or an equivalent to 
>> multiply two 500*500 matrices.
>
> I think there is a conflict of interest with what people want. 
> There seem to be people like me who only want or need simple 
> matrices like glm to do basic geometric/graphics related stuff. 
> Then there is the group of people who want large 500x500 
> matrices to do weird crazy maths stuff. Maybe they should be 
> kept separate? In which case then we are really talking about 
> adding two different things. Maybe have a std.math.matrix and a 
> std.blas?

Yes, that's what I was trying to point out. Anyway, gl3n or 
similar would be great to have in phobos, I've used it quite a 
bit and think it's great, but it should be very clear that it's 
not a general purpose matrix/linear algebra toolkit. It's a 
specialised set of types and operations specifically for 
low-dimensional geometry, with an emphasis on common graphics 
idioms.