hogan@AEROSPACE.ARPA (08/11/86)
If one uses Ada to strongly type each kind of physical unit (e.g. velocity, acceleration, force, energy, etc.), then one either has to do many conversions to accomplish the necessary equations or provide a package with many overloadings of common operators (e.g. *, +, -, /, etc). Would a phyics package with all of these types and overloaded operators be of any use in the general community? Has this been done before ? Does anyone know (does anyone care) ? How has this problem been attacked in existing systems. I have a feeling that using separate Ada types for each different physical unit when the different units must be frequently combined into equations to be of any use, is somehow not in the spirit of good object oriented design with Ada. Does anyone have a different opinion ? I will summarize replies that I receive. Mike Hogan hogan @ aerospace