Re: Overloading procedures with Float and Long_Float types

[Dmitry A. Kazakov <mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de>]

On Mon, 8 Mar 2004 16:17:42 -0000, "Luke Guest" <lguest@bubball.com>
wrote:

>> > Translate calls an imported glTranslate[fd] procedure depending on the
>> > parameter types.
>> >
>> Ah, you're calling a function with no return type which modifies a
>> hidden matrix, in place -- not a very good software design, IMHO.
>
>Hang on. Do you know anything about OpenGL? The matrix is in hardware (or
>software if the implementation is software) so, it's actually good design as
>it abstracts out the matrix.

I does not, because it cannot. The operation has a side effect on the
graphic context, no matter whether it is a hardware or sofware one.
This side effect is the only thing the operation actually does. So
clearly, the context has to be exposed as a parameter. A good design
would have the context (or a handle to it) as an in out parameter.
Then a good design would also clarify all things concerning multiple
contexts, concurrent access to a context etc. Further a good design
would never use both float and double, provided that probably either
both are same for the underlying hardware or one of them (float?) is
extremely inefficient.

--
Regards,
Dmitry Kazakov
www.dmitry-kazakov.de