Philosophy of basic Q (Was: Re: [QUANTITY] Data Model for Quantity v0.5

[David Berry]

Martin,

> Brian Thomas wrote:
>
> > 	Well, my concept of BasicQ (and I don't think I'm alone on this)
> > 	is that it was for _holding a single value_, not to make something
> > 	"really simple".
>
> In that case can we change the name to SingleQuantity?  There's not
> enough distinction between 'Core' and 'Basic'!

Whether or not we do that, we still need a Q which is "really simple"
to satisfy those who do not want the trouble of dealing with many
complex concepts which are not relevant to their situation.

I'm a bit confused by Brian's approach though. Are you saying, Brian,
that software which cannot handle multi-valued Quantities could simply
take a multi-valued StdQ and process it as a single valued Q, *without any
change*? I can see, possibly, that such an approach could give you access
to the first element of the multi-valued Q, but how can it give
sequential access to all elements? Is this what you are suggesting?

David

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Dr David S. Berry    (dsb at ast.man.ac.uk)

STARLINK project		 |	Centre for Astrophysics
(http://www.starlink.ac.uk/)	 |	University of Central Lancashire
Rutherford Appleton Laboratory	 |	PRESTON
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