[gavinlit]

I don't think it's a crock but will wait until I've read the book. Won't be out for a few weeks. But any hope of not having to worry about identities/formulae is shattered:
"Divine Proportions: Rational Trigonometry to Universal Geometry contains dozens of new and important formulas, and almost a hundred theorems. The formulas are mostly polynomial or rational, and the basic ones, such as the Triple Quad formula, the Spread Law, the Cross law and the Triple Spread formula are quadratic in any variable. The theorems are often based on existing results, but they hold in much greater generality, and their formulations are sometimes unusual. For example the new Spread polynomials replace the closely related Chebyshev polynomials of the first kind, but extend to arbitrary fields."

So it sounds like an alternative method of calculating ratios & trig functions. He does make a good point that calculators will only ever give approximations to trig ratios & that his methods give more accurate answers but we will see. I don't see how normal trig is that complex to begin with but I'm coming from a biased pov.