stick

= STICK

http://stick.rubyforge.org

STICK stands for Scientific Code Kit. It's main feature is the a sophisticated SI units system. It also includes a large set of natural constants and some extensions for the Matrix class.

== Installation

You can install via Rubygems

gem install stick

or via tarball

tar -xzf stick-x.y.z.tar.gz
cd stick
sudo task/setup

(on Windows 'ruby task/setup')

== Usage

=== Units System

Here are some examples of using the units system.

reqiure 'stick/units'

1.bit/s + 8.bytes/s
(1.bit/s).to(byte/s)
1.mile.to(feet)
1.acre.to(yd**2)
1.acre.to(sq_yd)
1.gallon.to(self.L)
1.lb.to(kg)
1.m.s.to(m.s)
1.sq_mi.to(km**2)
1.mile.to(km)
1.usd.to(twd)

The Units is namespace for all unit related classes. Mixing this in has the additional effect of making Units.with_unit_converter available without the Units. prefix, as well as the shortcuts for creating Units (see Units#method_missing).

=== Constants

Also included are a large assortment of real world contants. These come in two varieties, typeless and typed via units.rb. (PLEASE NOTE: The typed variety is not yet complete).

Constants are also provided in both mks (m kg s) and in cgs (cm g s) format.

require 'stick/constants/typeless_mks'
require 'stick/constants/typeless_cgs'

include Stick::Constants::Typeless

MKS::SPEED_OF_LIGHT              #=> 2.99792458e8
CGS::SPEED_OF_LIGHT              #=> 2.99792458e10

Big thanks to Daniel Carrera and Brian Gough for their original work on Math::Constants from which the typeless numbers derive.

=== Extensions to the Ruby's Matrix

Also included are Matrix extensions by Cosmin Bonchis, which was done as a Google Summer of Code 2007 project for Ruby Central Inc.

The library consists of some enhancements to the Ruby "Matrix" module and includes: LU and QR (Householder, Givens, Gram Schmidt, Hessenberg) decompositions, bidiagonalization, eigenvalue and eigenvector calculations.

This library is contatined in stick/matrix.rb, which also draws upon stick/mapcar.rb.

This code can also be found on RubyForge at: http://rubyforge.org/project/matrix.

== Authors/Contributors

• Peter Vanbroekhoven
• Thomas Sawyer
• Cosmin Bonchis
• Daniel Carrera
• Brian Gough

== License

Copyright 2006, 2007 Peter Vanbroekhoven, Thomas Sawyer

Stick is distributed under the terms of the MIT license.