On Wed, 27 Aug 2003 03:36:13 +0100, "Alan Smith" <ala### [at] aurora-ukcom>
wrote:
> Whilst I agree with the concept include unit files being theoretically
> equivalent as long as the conversion relationships are correctly expressed,

I'm happy I convinced you about that. If they are "theoretically equivalent"
your feature could not deliver "easier to cut and paste objects from other
peoples files" as you stated earlier :-)

> the reality will be that people would implement these themselves to
> differing degrees of accuracy and this would introduce errors, which cannot
> be quantified. For example, supposing someone accidentally defined 1in =
> 2.51cm instead of 2.54 or just defined it as 2.5.

This kind of typo error affects hard written features as well. I made a patch
for POV I included in PoPOV and later in MegaPOV which standarized
coefficients of color->gray conversion. Previously for years POV used
different coefficients in many places. So sources are not free from such
errors as well.

If you want to convince community about usability of your function imo you
should follow this way:
1. use your skills to make a patch
2. release binaries
3. make initial library of interesting textures written with units
Soon people would find it usefull there would be more advocates for
incorporating it first into MegaPOV and later in POV. If community would think
it is useless you will notice not much discussions about it.

ABX

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