From: John W Higgins <wishdev@...>
Date: 2009-12-24T03:17:27+09:00
Subject: Re: Trig value errors

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Respectifully........

On Wed, Dec 23, 2009 at 9:42 AM, jzakiya <jzakiya@mail.com> wrote:

> All that is necessary is that
> you CARE enough that it does it.
>
> It would make me very happy if I could share my code, and
> not have to include patches and redefinitions in it just
> to assure other people get the same (exact) results I do.
>
> I agree with your Principle of Least Surprises (POLS).
>
> The language should work to please the user.
> The language should be intuitive to the user.
> The language should not cause unnecessary surprises.
>
> So please, fix these errors.
>
> This will make me happy.
>
>
What would make pretty much everyone on this list happy is if you took 1/10
the amount of time you've spent calling the Ruby community idiots actually
investigating why your tool of choice works better than you are getting from
the C STANDARD (note that nasty 8 letter word again) library. I took a 1
minute look at the Qalculate website and discovered that it uses the CLN
library for its math functions. Apparently that library has a higher degree
of precision that the C STANDARD library used by Ruby.

Shockingly choices are made that have nothing to do with people caring or
not. Clearly since a number of folks have decided to attempt to assist you
in even with your ignorant rant against the community we must care about
even the ignorant amongst us.

You may feel absolutely free to build an extension to access the library.

Also, taking another 2 minutes to investigate just a bit further I came
across a post from matz himself discussing this exact library (along with
GMP - another alternative).
http://osdir.com/ml/ruby-talk/2009-03/msg01505.html The problem is that
LEGALLY they cannot link a pure GPL library into ruby because of licensing
issues. Again, sometimes decisions are made that affect 1% of the user base
that are unfortunate but unless you step up and help (and bitching isn't
helping) - you are never going to get what you want. BTW, there appears to
be at least some form of an extension to access GMP which may be of
assistance to you -
http://t-a-w.blogspot.com/2007/08/resurrection-of-libgmp-ruby.html

Please step up yourself and assist the community in gaining access to more
precise mathematical functionality rather than making unfounded and
exceptionally ignorant accusations. No one years ago got a big chuckle out
of placing barriers to someone's future attempt to use sin and cos - we're
just plugging along doing the best we can.

John

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