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=-1.3 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_MSGID autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,739a60c0e1bc03c6 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public From: dewar@cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar) Subject: Re: 32 and 64 bit floats Date: 1996/01/08 Message-ID: #1/1 X-Deja-AN: 134548779 references: <30e6cca7.34638660@news.onramp.net> organization: Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Date: 1996-01-08T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: I said "> Oops, no! AI's do not make anything in the RM obsolete, they merely > point you to the right interpretation, so the existence of AI-00459 just > goes to prove that my interpretatoin was right, and yours wrong (it's > sort of like papal councils telling you after the fact whether you have > sinned :-)" to which Keith went into a long explanation of how some AI's are not really interpretations but changes. Keith, how many smileys do you need in a message :-) :-) :-) By the way, the story about the insertion of not is entirely apocryphal, I was familiar with both the efforts Keith mentions (I was chair of the Algol 60/68 maintenance committee for many years). We must used this mythical happening as a way of emphasizing just how much interpretation freedom we had, but in formal terms, WG9 did not change the standard, they only interpreted it (here are some more smileys just to make things clear :-) :-) :-) Historically, the argument that the RM did not in any case require long_integer to be longer than integer did play a part (I was there!) What it did was to weaken an otherwise strong argument that the RM was decisive. The ARG was always a little reluctant to make interpretations that clearly changed the wording and intent of the RM, so it makes it easier to get agreement to a "change" if it is not so clear that it is a change!