From 89ab3dba9cc0a94dd252f9618453e33f93beb0f4 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Wolfgang Bangerth Date: Mon, 28 Mar 2005 17:27:54 +0000 Subject: [PATCH] Reword the documentation that seems to be a left-over from 1997. git-svn-id: https://svn.dealii.org/trunk@10248 0785d39b-7218-0410-832d-ea1e28bc413d --- deal.II/base/include/base/tensor_base.h | 18 ++++++++++++++---- 1 file changed, 14 insertions(+), 4 deletions(-) diff --git a/deal.II/base/include/base/tensor_base.h b/deal.II/base/include/base/tensor_base.h index 6133fbcb41..a66e9b6be8 100644 --- a/deal.II/base/include/base/tensor_base.h +++ b/deal.II/base/include/base/tensor_base.h @@ -43,11 +43,21 @@ template class Tensor<1,dim>; /** * This class is a specialized version of the Tensor class. - * It handles tensors with one index, i.e. vectors, of fixed dimension - * and offers the functionality needed for tensors of higher rank. + * It handles tensors with one index, i.e. vectors, of fixed dimension and + * provides the basis for the functionality needed for tensors of higher rank. * - * In many cases, you will want to use the more specialized Point class - * which acts as a tensor of rank one but has more functionality. + * Within deal.II, the distinction between this class and its derived class + * Point is that we use the Point class mainly to denote the + * points that make up geometric objects. As such, they have a small number of + * additional operations over general tensors of rank 1 for which we use the + * Tensor<1,dim> class. In particular, there is a distance() function + * to compute the Euclidian distance between two points in space. + * + * However, the Point class is really only used where the coordinates + * of an object can be thought to possess the dimension of a length. For all + * other uses, such as the gradient of a scalar function (which is a tensor of + * rank 1, or vector, with as many elements as a point object, but with + * different physical units), we use the Tensor<1,dim> class. */ template class Tensor<1,dim> -- 2.39.5