JuliaGeometry / JuliaGeometry/Rotations.jl

Docstrings for RotXYZ and similar could cause confusion with keyword arguments

Open
#294 3 comments 0 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub

Nobody has claimed this yet.

Dominant language
Julia
Stars
188
Forks
45
PR merge metrics
No merged PRs in 30d

Description

Taking RotXYZ(roll=r, pitch=p, yaw=y) as an example, the docstring says

The keyword argument form applies roll, pitch and yaw to the X, Y and Z axes respectively, in XYZ order.

I began somewhat uninitiated on Euler angles, so it took me quite some time to realize that XYZ order refers the the order of matrix multiplication (RxRyRz), rather than the sequence of actually carrying out the rotations. I thought it meant first rotate around the X axis by r, then around Y by p, then around Z by y.

The first sentence in the same doscstring is super clear, indicating the sequence of rotations and which argument is used for each, so maybe this pattern could be used for the keyword arguments case too. Also perhaps it could be made clear that the keyword arguments essentially relate to argument order, e.g. RotZXY(a, b, c) == RotZXY(roll=b, pitch=c, yaw=a). Or maybe just use X, Y, Z as keyword arguments?

Thanks for your work on the package!

Contributor guide

No contributing guide indexed for this repository

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

Locate the RotXYZ docstring and the corresponding docstrings for similar rotation constructors. Read how positional and keyword arguments are currently described, then revise the wording so rotation order and keyword-to-axis mapping cannot be confused; done means the documentation clearly distinguishes matrix multiplication order from the sequence of rotations.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
julia
Domain
documentation
Issue type
Documentation
Difficulty
3/5
Estimated time
1-2 days
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
45/100

Get new issues in your inbox

A short digest of beginner-friendly GitHub issues.