tabs, on 01 February 2013 - 01:09 AM, said:
I understand the sentiment, but this is basic information of an entity that is completely reasonable for a proximity sensor to give. That the data is available via a pre-built function call lets you know how intrinsic it is to doing anything with entity locations. I'm not asking anyone to write an algorithm to calculate a vector, simply to get the data from the existing code using the supplied method.
Your opinion of the spirit of CC is admirable, and generally I share it, but there are already many conveniences included in CC and for very good reason. Knowing something's direction vector is not the same as having my software written for me. It is like having the name of the entity available as a string rather than a stream of bits that I must parse myself. The function already exists to return a string, so we use it.
The username is a bad example IMO, because it's the most general representation of the player's name. You could also include the username in lowercase from the Java part because the function already exists.
Now, to avoid the sentiment. Let's look at it from a logical point of view. Fetching the direction vector directly from the Locate instance gives you the direction vector in world coordinates, but we deliberately tried our best to avoid including any information that breaks the so called 'fourth wall'. Having access to the compass direction of a turtle is a bit of a violation of this and does a lot of dirty work for you.
Also, it's logical that the sensor locates entities relatively to the sensor. Converting this to world coordinates is an extra step that would require some gps or solar navigating skills that seems a bit out of the scope of an entity sensor.
If, on the other hand, you want to get the direction vector relatively to the turtle then it's just trivial to do so with what you have now:
vector.new(pos.xCoord, pos.yCoord, pos.zCoord):normalize()
It's my view on the case. But maybe you can convince me otherwise. And there are more members on the team anyway.

(and it's a community project besides the team as well).