CGAL users discussion list

["Max" <>]

Hi all,

CGAL is really a great lib, and I'm trying to learn and apply the
wide range of functionalities of it. Here's just a small 
question/enquire.

I've found it's nearly conventional for the users/authors of CGAL
to use 'Kernel' or 'R' or 'NT' as the typename of the kernel
type in instantiating specific geometric types. It's quite well
to make it easier to understand the code with such 'convention'.

And people, including user and the authors, will from time to time
need to deduce the kernel type from a given specialiazed type, say,
Polyhedron, or Point_3, and make extention block with this deduced
type. it's a widely used technique in C++ template programming.

If I understand correctly, we could use
        typename Point_3::R
and
        typename Polyhedron_3::Traits
to deduce the kernel type from a CGAL::Point_3 or a CGAL::Polyhedron_3
specialized type, respectively.

To the extent of my knowledge and imagination, I think it would be elegant
to have a unified means to do such kind of matter, say

        typename Point_3::???, or
        typename Polyhedron_3::???
        typename Polygon_2::???
        typename Polygon_with_holes::???

for any of these gemetric types, the ??? above could be replaced with
just ONE single symbol, it could be 'Kernel', 'R', or 'NT' or anything 
else the author feel appropriate.

Any response or discussion will be welcome.
And many thanks to the authors of CGAL for your contributions to
make this lib available.

B/Rgds
Max