Re: Getting greatest decimal accuracy out of G_PI

[Tor Lillqvist <tml iki fi>]

 > Just feeling for the limits of what I can do given the contraints
 > of the language.

And how is that related to GTK+?

 > I like to think about things like using the center of the earth as
 > an origin, and using a spherical coordinate system to locate
 > points(and/or areas volumes) on the surface or in space. The accuracy 
 > depends mostly on the accuracy of the angles in radians( ie. the
 > number of decimal places of PI).

What about the accuracy of the measurements that specify where said
points are in the first place? What about the accuracy of the
trigonometric function implementations? What about the accuracy and
stability (etc, stuff I don't really know) of the algorithms you use?
You do know, I hope, that for instance (hypothetically) adding a 20
digit "accurate" 1.0000000000000000000 to an equally accurate
1.0000000000000000000e-6 a million times isn't necessarily going to
produce what you perhaps expect.

 > I'm sure it can go into the other direction also, what about nano-technology
 > where you are dealing with the super-small. The ability to distinquish
 > very small angles would be very important.

Sorry, but I do get the feeling that this is one of the discussions
where the somewhat blunt but most appropriate answer is "if you have
to ask that question (on an off-topic mailing list, even), you
shouldn't be doing it".

--tml