[Cfp-interest 1465] Re: AIs for powr paper

[Jim Thomas]

> On Feb 3, 2020, at 5:07 PM, Damian McGuckin <damianm at esi.com.au> wrote:
> 
> On Mon, 3 Feb 2020, Jim Thomas wrote:
> 
>> Action items:
>>          Jim: Ensure natural log is written as log in the standard (regarding
>>      C2x_proposal_-_powr_justification_wording-20200104.pdf).
>>          Jim: Ensure thin spaces are put where needed in
>>      C2x_proposal_-_powr_justification_wording-20200104.pdf. Ex. Between the e and y in the "e^y log x"
>>      in three places. 
>> Natural log in the C standard is loge with the ?e? as a subscript. Here an update addressing both action items:
>> http://wiki.edg.com/pub/CFP/WebHome/C2x_proposal_-_powr_justification_wording-20200203.pdf
> 
> Should the footnote

The footnote in question is

(*) Restricting the domain to that of the formula e ^ (y loge x) is intended to better meet expectations for a continuous power function and to allow more efficient implementation by avoiding some case analysis.

> read as
> 
>  ... is intended NOT ONLY to meet expectations for a continuous
>  power function BUT ALSO to allow A more efficient implementation

I don’t see that the extra words add anything. Also the suggested change seems to imply that the first reason is more obvious or has already been explained, which isn’t the case.

> Those in 'quotes' are my additions. Do you need an 'a' in front of 'more efficient' in that footnote. Excuse my Australian English if that clashes with what would normally appear.

The current draft of the footnote uses “implementation” to refer to the act of implementing. This is not ideal, because the C standard defines the term “implementation” to refer to a set of software. How about “… and to allow implementations to avoid some case analysis”? 
> 
> Does analysis need to be plural? Hmmm? 'analysis cases'?  Not sure.

I don’t think it needs to be plural.

A different point: “case analysis” is not a term that appears in the C standard, and an internet search didn’t readily turn up a definition matching what we mean. Maybe “… and to allow implementations with fewer tests for special cases”?

- Jim Thomas

> Getting a tight sentence in there is hard.
> 
> Regards - Damian
> 
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