| John W. Kennedy 2006-01-21, 3:55 am |
| robin wrote:
> From: "John W. Kennedy" <jwkenne@attglobal.net>
> Sent: Wednesday, January 18, 2006 2:16 PM
>
>
> I think that it would be a good idea if you ceased
> your ridiculous allegations, which have not been based on anything.
You said -- it's quoted right above -- that the FORTRAN compiler for the
704 had to support double precision "in order to meet the standard",
which is absurd, because the FORTRAN compiler for the 704 was the first
FORTRAN compiler there ever was, and existed long before any standard.
>
> If you look again, you will see that I didn't say that.
In one and the same posting, you said, "What's important is ... the
number of mantissa bits," and then followed it up by indicating that the
360 did a good thing by increasing the exponent range at the expense of
fraction bits. You can't have it both ways.
>
> The only person who doesn't know what "mantissa" means
> is your self. Do you still think that it is to do with logarithms?
> And BTW, I didn't contradict myself.
Actually, I didn't raise the issue of logarithms; Glen did. However, he
was right; the use of "mantissa" to mean "fraction component of a
floating-point number", though widespread, is an abuse, like using "k"
to mean 1024.
I have already indicated how you contradicted yourself.
>
> I'll leave it for you to work out what the bits might be for.
The actual format of a 704 floating-point number was:
S (it was called S rather than zero): sign
1-8: excess-128 exponent
9-35: fraction.
--
John W. Kennedy
"But now is a new thing which is very old--
that the rich make themselves richer and not poorer,
which is the true Gospel, for the poor's sake."
-- Charles Williams. "Judgement at Chelmsford"
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