[ANSI-Smalltalk] Agenda items...

[Paolo Bonzini]

Andres Valloud wrote:
> independently of how we arbitrarily choose to represent doubles 
> in source code,

I don't see how this has to do with source code.

> is the implementation limit of the binary representation 
> --- which is codified as a standard and is something that every source 
> code representation scheme will have to abide by.  Therefore, I think 
> emax should refer to the characteristic behavior of the binary 
> representation of doubles.

But we're on violent agreement on this.  emax is, with no possible way 
to disagree, the highest exponent that can be seen for a valid float, in 
the sign/mantissa/exponent representation of the float itself.  This is 
unambiguous.

It is just that the definition *of the mantissa* is not what you're 
accustomed to.  You believe that emax should be the exponent of a number 
that is realizable with doubles, while LIA is clear that it is not so 
because it defines the mantissa to be <1.

Paolo