Main benefits

• More ability for coordinate systems to interpolate to each other with less care from the programmer
• Allows buoys and nadir to work inside the C++ code for speed; while allowing the buoy to interpolate to a non-buoy.

Concepts

Coordinate system type

E.g. "affine", "rotation", "fisheye", "buoytrans".

Derived coordinate system type

A coordinate system type whose possible transformations are a subset of another coordinate system type's transformations, implemented internally by generating a set of parameters for the parent type.

For example, the buoytrans coordinate system, which is a translation to the location where the buoy should be, based on a point in an anchor coordinate system. This means that the buoy will move naturally when the anchor point moves, instead of linearly interpolating. However, the buoytrans function will never transform in any way that's not representable as a pure translation.

Parent coordinate system

A coordinate system through which the coordinates, having been transformed by the child, are transformed:

p_screen = parent(child(p)),

where p is the original point (in child coordsys), child() is the transformation of the coordsys itself, parent() is the transformation of the coordsys' parent, and p_screen is the final point in screen coordinates.

All derived coordinate system types have exactly the same parent coordinate system(s) and interpretations as the parent coordinate system transformations.

Currently all coordinate systems have only one parent.

The theoretical point here is that the parent coordinate system's transformation at an uncountable set of locations will affect the child coordinate system, unlike with determining coordinate systems.

For example, consider a translation whose parent coordinate system is a distortion: all points transformed by the translation also get transformed by the distortion: the value of the distortion transformation at every point is significant.

Determining coordinate system

A coordinate system which participates in defining another coordinate system. That is, when determining the transformation to be used by a coordinate system, a finite set of samples from the determining coordinate systems can be taken, in addition to the interpolated parameters of the coordinate systems.

Derived coordinate system types can have entirely different sets and interpretations of determining coordinate systems.

For example, consider again the case of the distortion coordinate system as a parent. But this time, let's make an anchor coordinate system inside it, and make a buoytrans system use it. This time, only the value of the distortion coordinate system at the origin of the anchor coordinate system matters! This value can be used to create a normal translation.

Compatible coordinate systems

Coordinate systems which are of types ultimately derived from the same coordinate system type.

Changes

This change doesn't affect any frozen APIs yet, and is PEGged only because of its complexity.

Coordinate systems may accept more than one other coordinate systems as parameters. The first other coordinate system is the parent, and the others are determining coordinate systems.

When interpolating coordinate systems of the same type, nothing changes from the previous code.

However, when interpolating coordinate systems of different type,

1. If the types are compatible, their common ancestor is used: at both end times, the common ancestor is generated and used for interpolation
2. If not compatible, neither is shown.

For example:

a = vs1.buoyCS(parent_1, "X", anchorCS, ...)

b = vs2.translate(parent_2, "X", ...)

would then work as expected.

(Benja:) buoyCS would be an addition to VobScene? Also, translate should be translateCS as of PEG 1009.