[Cfp-interest] Reset for TS 18661 Part 3?

[James W Thomas]

On May 28, 2013, at 1:17 AM, Mike Cowlishaw <mfc at speleotrove.com> wrote:

> (This is my to-do from May Telecon.) 
>  
> At the WG 14 meeting in Delft, TS 18661 Part 3 met with confusion and concern about data-interchange types vs interchange floating types. Why are they named the same (_FloatN, _DecimalN)? Why are data-interchange types named _FloatN when they aren’t floating types? Why do non-arithmetic interchange formats need types at all? Following is an outline of a different approach to supporting the IEC 60559 non-arithmetic interchange formats, intended to address these issues. We will discuss this approach at the May 16 CFP teleconference. Email discussion beforehand is encouraged, especially from WG14 members who were at Delft. 
>  
> [snip]
>  
> I've read and thought about this proposal; it all sounds good.
>  
>  A couple of minor queries/concerns:
> (Item  2) "If _DecimalN is supported, so shall be decencodingdN_t and binencodingdN_t" -- wonder if this should be a 'should' rather than a 'shall'?
> (6)  Define: the general floating types and IEC 60559 floating types are collectively called the real floating types. -- the word 'real' is a bit uncomfortable here; although it has been used in programming languages before its use has been criticised because the term is more usually used to imply a continuous numerical system, whereas C floating types provide sets of discrete values and are therefore just an approximation of real numbers.
> 
> Perhaps instead of 'real', use 'C', or 'scalar'?  Or some other option ... 
> Mike

The term "real floating types" is defined and used in many places in the C Standard. I don't think we can change the use of the term there. (We do, however, want most of what the Standard says about real floating types to apply to the arithmetic types we're adding.)

-Jim

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