[squeak-dev] "position" or "location"?

Hi all.

I'm (still) designing a new Canvas API (http://gulik.pbwiki.com/Canvas).

When describing screen coordinates, which is a better term to use: "location" or "position"? Is there a technical difference between these words that I don't know about?

Gulik.

--
http://people.squeakfoundation.org/person/mikevdg
http://gulik.pbwiki.com/

I don't know of any difference in the connotation of the two words, but "location" would probably sound a bit odd to anyone who spends a lot of time with graphics code.  If you want to also be explicit about an object's orientation, "translation" is also a synonym for position/location that you might use.

Hi Gulik,

Glad to know you're working on it. I'm not sure if your new Canvas will
ever work together with Morphic 3, but even if not, I'm sure we can
share ideas, may be algorithms and code.

In Morphic 3, I used the term "position" for coordinates (usually x@y)
for some morph. I believe this is the usual term for this usual concept.
I also wanted to have an object that fully specifies how a morph is
located in some space. This includes a "position" together with the used
extent, and an orientation angle. I called this objects "Location" (I
have a class named Location).

I believe this makes for a nicer design that just having separated
instvars in morphs, or a bounds rectangle as in Morphic 2.

I suggest then using "position", and perhaps adding the "location"
concept if it fits your design. Anyway, if you come with better names, I
could change mine.

Cheers,
Juan Vuletich

Ps: I agree with you. Lines are really rectangles. But only if they have
square edges. A rectangle with "rounded corners" is not a rectangle anymore!

Michael van der Gulik wrote:

Joshua Gargus wrote:
> You might also want to bug Dan Amelang from Viewpoints to see if he's recently
> written anything about Gezira (roughly speaking, a more advanced version of
> Cairo).

He did make his thesis about JitBLT available online:

http://www.vpri.org/pdf/tr2008002_jitblt.pdf

-- Jecel

In my mind, Locations often have names (.e.g. Ronnie’s Bar, UpperLeftCorner), whereas when Positions have names, the names
tend to refer to the shape of something more than where it is located (.e.g. fetal position, “69”); although sometimes named positions refer to “where”.

 

Another difference is that “position” can be a verb. So #position: is verbish…

 

How’s that for rubbish?

Cam

PS: so unless they are named, I would lean towards position – but that’s a personal preference.

 

Hi all.

I'm (still) designing a new Canvas API (http://gulik.pbwiki.com/Canvas).

When describing screen coordinates, which is a better term to use: "location" or "position"? Is there a technical difference between these words that I don't know about?

Gulik.

--
http://people.squeakfoundation.org/person/mikevdg
http://gulik.pbwiki.com/

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