Re: IEEE 754 compliance

[Prof J C Nash <nashjc ncf ca>]

The complexities of the "edge effects" are best kept out of the 
spreadsheet, as Morten indicates. However, there are some computations 
that might be influenced by how a particular internal calculation is 
performed. I was earlier looking at the ends of the Gaussian (normal) 
distribution where one gets some weirdness in Excel. This could be 
because very small numbers are handled poorly.

It is in the special functions etc. that I would think Gnumeric and 
other spreadsheets are most likely to be interested in IEEE 754 and its 
revision.

Must admit I was unaware of 754r activity. Thanks Dave. For info, 
there's a nice Wikipedia item at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_754r 
with a link to a recent essay by Velvel Kahan (who was really the person 
who got all the floating point stuff going, and in the 1960s pretty well 
embarassed IBM into retrofitting the 360 with guard digits for floating 
point) that gives a nice and nasty example using Excel. I've tried this 
in Gnumeric and get somewhat different results, but which I'm sure would 
upset novice users.

JN


Morten Welinder wrote:
> Gnumeric does not let you access NaN etc.  It would interfere with the
> desired semantics.
>
> Morten
>