Re: TIP 132 (was Re: [TCLCORE] The Big TIP Round-Up!)

[Donal K. F. <don...@ma...>]

Donald G Porter wrote:

>I want this one to happen.  I want it enough, I'll probably end up
>taking it on just so that I can be sure it gets done.  Will be grateful
>for help, of course.
>  
>
I think you'll be able to ask me for help, though it'll be as a general 
coder-type person and not as someone who knows the guts of 
floating-point handling very well.

>FWIW, I think the spec on this proposal is finished.  Only implementation
>seems to be the difficulty, so I think we could go ahead and vote on
>this to move it to Accepted status, as an additional sign/motivation
>that implementation work is worthwhile.
>  
>
Modulo the references to a particular implementation of the 
floating-point code within the TIP, I'd largely agree.  However, I'm 
less keen on mandating the use of David Gay's code.  Instead, perhaps 
that should just be taken as being illustrative of what is desired.  I 
wonder whether it is possible to do this code in a platform-independent 
way though; I thought the messy nature of the DG codebase was a major 
implementation sticking point...?  Did I misunderstand what KBK was 
saying earlier this year?  Is something less than perfect but still good 
enough for most purposes (and portable) likely to be a reasonable 
compromise?

Donal.