I have finally thought to check out Maple for unit abilities, and have
found that Maple has an extremely powerful and comprehensive Units
package. I find myself both amused and somewhat chagrined to note that
the design I was iterating toward (physconst package + unit package,
and even many of the details of the structuring and handling of unit
storage and commands) was already mature in Maple's system, and since
vesion 7 too. Now I wish I had looked at their solution much earlier -
it would have saved time. Twenty lashes with the wet noodle for not
doing my homework. I guess in the future for new share packages the
first thing to do should be to check Maple/Mathematica's packages to
see if anyone has already figured out the proper design. For complex
mathematical abilities this might or might not be useful, but for more
basic stuff like units there really are only a few "good" ways to do
things.
Anyway, I was curious if anybody out there has worked with this system,
and can comment on its ups and downs. Aside from some of the details
of the syntax and possibly one or two other minor points, this looks
like almost exactly what I had in mind. Thus, it would be good to know
what actual users find good or annoying, if we happen to have any
around.
CY
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