From: Joaquin Cuenca Abela (e98cuenc@yahoo.com)
Date: Thu Aug 08 2002 - 10:41:27 EDT
You should be reading my mind.
Yesterday I started deletting InLayoutUnits variants
and leaving only 1 units, and I changed the only unit
I left to floats.
So I think that we are both in sync but for the type
to represent the units: float or integer calculations.
Here are the advantages/incovenients as I see them:
1) Speed: here it's a draw. Contrary to common
knowledge, floating point operations are not a
bottleneck since the 486SX days, and for those
"machines FPU impaired" our speed is probably sucking
there anyway. A few years ago (at the pentium I rise)
rumors said that floating point calculations were
*faster* than integer calculations, because the
processor had more oportunities to parallelize
calculations.
2) Easy to use: floats gain for a wide margin. If we
go the integer way, prepare yourself to deal with
macros/inline functions for almost everything:
multiplication, div, rounding, etc.
3) Pango: here integer calculations win (if we choose
the same units as pango). I'm not expecting that to
be a big deal with floating units, but I may be
biased.
4) layout independance for the years to come: if we go
the integer units way, we prevent any numerical
problems. If we go the floating point way, slight
changes in the way we calculate something, may change
the result due to numerical instability, and thus it
may affect layout. Before you consider this point as
a fundamental one, take in account that we've already
changed the layout of the user documents from version
to version for much lamer reasons, and we've not
changed it in "subtle" ways, but in rather radical
ways.
I will not consider this point as important until I
see a real committement to render documents the same
way in any abiword document.
To me, 2 is heavier than the other points, except
maybe 4, but I still have to see 4 giving real
problems.
Opinions?
I will keep speaking of some related problems that the
removing of layout units will give us, and how to
remove these problems, in another email.
Cheers,
=====
Joaquin Cuenca Abela
e98cuenc@yahoo.com
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