From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,FREEMAIL_FROM autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,38fc011071df5a27 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2003-09-26 18:06:56 PST Path: news1.google.com!newsfeed.stanford.edu!headwall.stanford.edu!newshub.sdsu.edu!elnk-nf2-pas!newsfeed.earthlink.net!wn14feed!wn13feed!worldnet.att.net!204.127.198.203!attbi_feed3!attbi.com!rwcrnsc51.ops.asp.att.net.POSTED!not-for-mail Message-ID: <3F74E2A6.6020907@comcast.net> From: "Robert I. Eachus" User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.0.2) Gecko/20021120 Netscape/7.01 X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: How to get a =?ISO-8859-1?Q?=BBConventional_Ada_Library=AB?= =?ISO-8859-1?Q?_=28Was=3A_Ideas_for_Ada_200X=29?= References: <6a90b886.0305262344.1d558079@posting.google.com> <3ED4A94C.2020501@noplace.com> <3ED6A852.75AC0133@adaworks.com> <3ED74ED3.4020505@noplace.com> <3ED7C8C5.3070902@cogeco.ca> <3ED826BB.9010509@noplace.com> <3F61BA28.3060507@crs4.it> <3F6205B8.3070402@attbi.com> <3F6316DC.7080106@noplace.com> <3F743AE7.5050305@noplace.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit NNTP-Posting-Host: 24.34.139.183 X-Complaints-To: abuse@comcast.net X-Trace: rwcrnsc51.ops.asp.att.net 1064624815 24.34.139.183 (Sat, 27 Sep 2003 01:06:55 GMT) NNTP-Posting-Date: Sat, 27 Sep 2003 01:06:55 GMT Organization: Comcast Online Date: Sat, 27 Sep 2003 01:06:55 GMT Xref: news1.google.com comp.lang.ada:43204 Date: 2003-09-27T01:06:55+00:00 List-Id: Marin David Condic wrote: > Ada should have had a "standard" container library back in Ada83. It > could have, and should have had a whole "library concept" that included > some big, general-use library right from the get-go. (C came with > "standard" library packages, didn't it? Ada didn't even have a standard > square-root subroutine! Whos silly-ass idea was that, anyway? Mine, along with a lot of other people. The problem wasn't bad implementations of square root, it was truly horrible libraries of the other standard transendental functions. The choice was to delay the standard until we knew what sort of a math library to put in, or standardize now (in 1982) and set up the NRG (back then the NumWG) to figure out what a good math library should look like, and standardize that separately. That was done. It took a lot longer than expected but ended up with a proposal, and a fast portable implementation of it, that had significantly better error limits for most of the functions than was known to be possible in 1982. Most of those new better algorithms and limits were developed by the NumWG or NumWG members. SC22 then set up the WG11 to do the same thing for all languages, and also incorporate some of the IEEE 754 work. The result is the Language Independent Arithmetic standards. Most Ada 83 compiler vendors followed the NumWG/NRG work, and provided a standard package that used the current state of the NumWG work. But in early Ada days it was definitely a moving target. I remember one meeting where several of the accuracy limits were reduced by a factor of eight. -- Robert I. Eachus "Quality is the Buddha. Quality is scientific reality. Quality is the goal of Art. It remains to work these concepts into a practical, down-to-earth context, and for this there is nothing more practical or down-to-earth than what I have been talking about all along...the repair of an old motorcycle." -- from Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig