Syntax Improvement ideas

[ahoarau]

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Hello, I'm glad to see this great library being updated, so I'm giving my two cents on some improvements that could be made on the syntax, based on my experience:

KDL::Vector

• 1a. Make the data an Eigen::Vector3d so we can do math with it
• 1b. Make x,y,z accessors public so we can do v.x = 1.0, instead of v.x(1.0) and double x = v.x()

KDL::Rotation

• Make the data an Eigen::Matrix3d so we can do eigen math with it

KDL::JntArray

• Make a zero-alloc constructor from an Eigen::VectorXd and std::vector<double>
• Have an accessor operator []
• make it compatible with c++11 range-based iterators
• Make it inherit from a KDL::Array class that could be used to create some gains for example. Right now people are either mixing eigen/kdl types or using JntArrays for gains.

KDL::JntArrayVel

• Make a zero-alloc constructor from eigen, std and JntArrays

All dynamic size arrays

• Have the ability to "lock" the size of the array and throw exception if some aliasing occurs

All classes

• Init at zero, or identity for matrices

What do you guys think ?

[meyerj]

All sounds good and reasonable. But likely this requires a bigger refactoring and also a bump to version 2, because most of the suggested changes break the API and require changes in user code, too.

But there is definitely a need for such a breaking refactoring, also to iron out many inconsistencies in the current API and to make use of some C++11 or newer features. Maybe we can use this issue to collect more ideas and suggestions, or just to reference it in other issues where API-breaking suggestions have been or will be made.

[ahoarau]

Is there any roadmap for this 2.0 version ?