NAME
Data::Vitals - The Perl "Vital Statistics" Library
DESCRIPTION
The world of clothing and fashion works to an annoyingly anacronistic and complicated set of measurements. The Perl "Vital Statistics" Library is an attempt to create a comprehensive set of classes, object and algorithms for working with human-describing data such as height, body measurements, shoe, bra and other clothing sizes.
It is not intended to be the end to a means, or the solution to a specific problem, but rather a general package that can be used to build more specific packages. It is intended that the library should be extremely flexible, highly extendible, support locales in some form, and be heavily unit tested to ensure that packages built on top of Data::Vitals have a reliable base.
Data::Vitals measurement objects are useful for both male and female measurements.
Implementation Style
As is generally the case with complex and twisty subjects (such as DateTime) this library is implemented in a highly object-orientated form.
For the sake of completeness we take this to rather extreme levels. For example, a Data::Vitals::Waist object specifically refers for a measurement of the circumference of the torso taken at a waist.
Metric and Imperial
Please note that all measurements are stored and stringified into metric values (although they can be input in various forms). This is for forward compability with the long term worldwide trend towards metrification. For now, locales that use imperial values should explicitly call the various ->as_imperial methods.
Class List
Data::Vitals::Height - Height measurement
Data::Vitals::Circumference - General circumference measurement
Data::Vitals::Hips - Measurement of the circumference around the hips
Data::Vitals::Waist - Measurement of the circumference around the waist
Data::Vitals::Frame - The "Frame" measurement. Circumference around the chest, just below the breasts.
Data::Vitals::Chest - Measurement of the circumference around the chest
Data::Vitals::Underarm - Measurement of the circumference around the torso at a position under the arms.
STATUS
This contains an implementation of Height measurements, plus a number of measurements of the circumference of the torso at various points. i.e. Hips/Waist/Chest/etc
Unit testing and documentation is up to date.
Please note that nothing that produces an error (by returning undef) sets an error message in any form. This will be resolved in a later version.
Please note that the measurement ranges are very large by default. The maximum allowable values exceed by a small percentage the world records for the various measurements (at the time of writing).
However, the minimums of the range may be unsuitable for newborn or premature babies. The ability to customise these ranges will be added in a later version.
METHODS
height $height
The height method creates and returns a height object. It takes as argument a "height string".
Returns a new Data::Vitals::Height object on success, or undef on error.
hips $circumference
The hips method creates and returns a hip measurement object.
It takes as argument a "circumference string" (see Data::Vitals::Circumference for details)
Returns a new Data::Vitals::Hips object, or undef on error.
waist $circumference
The waist method creates and returns a waist measurement object.
It takes as argument a "circumference string" (see Data::Vitals::Circumference for details)
Returns a new Data::Vitals::Waist object, or undef on error.
frame $circumference
The frame method creates and returns a "frame" measurement object. Mainly used for women, the frame is the circumference of the torso over the rib cage, immediately below the breasts and specifically not included any breast material.
It takes as argument a "circumference string" (see Data::Vitals::Circumference for details)
Returns a new Data::Vitals::Frame object, or undef on error.
chest $circumference
The chest method creates and returns a chest measurement object. For women, this is also known as a "bust" measurement.
It takes as argument a "circumference string" (see Data::Vitals::Circumference for details)
Returns a new Data::Vitals::Chest object on success, or undef on error.
bust $circumference
The bust method is an alias for the chest method.
underarm $circumference
The underarm method creates and returns an underarm measurement object, which is the circumference of the torso under the arms and above (for women) the breasts.
It takes as argument a "circumference string" (see Data::Vitals::Circumference for details)
Returns a new Data::Vitals::Underarm object, or undef on error.
TO DO
- Allow for per-measurement ranges, that can be tweaked if needed in special cases.
- Add Data::Vitals::Weight
- Add Data::Vitals::Bra
- Add Data::Vitals::Dress (in the various country standards)
- Add Data::Vitals::Shoe (in the various country standards)
SUPPORT
Bugs should always be reported via the CPAN bug tracker
http://rt.cpan.org/NoAuth/ReportBug.html?Queue=Data-Vitals
For other issues, contact the maintainer.
As the author is no longer working in the fashion/modelling industry, volunteers for taking over maintenance would be gratefully accepted.
AUTHORS
Adam Kennedy <adamk@cpan.org>
ACKNOWLEGEMENTS
Thank you to Phase N (http://phase-n.com/) for permitting the open sourcing and release of this distribution.
COPYRIGHT
Copyright 2004 - 2008 Adam Kennedy.
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.
The full text of the license can be found in the LICENSE file included with this module.