"Bradd W. Szonye" <xxxxxx@szonye.com> writes:

> The IEEE 754-1985 standard is already "overdue for revision," according
> to the working group (http://grouper.ieee.org/groups/754/revision.html).
> There's a revision in progress, "since 2000, with a target completion
> date of December 2005" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_754r).
> However, it looks like there may be problems with the revision.

It doesn't seem to introduce behavior incompatible with the old version,
i.e. programs which strictly assume IEEE-754 should work with IEEE-754r.

"The intent of the revision is to extend the standard where it has become
necessary, to tighten up certain areas of the original standard which
were left undefined, and to merge in IEEE 854 (the radix-independent
floating-point standard)."

This implies that a language design based on IEEE-754 which does not
try to promise more than IEEE-754 will be possible to be extended to
conform to IEEE-754r in a compatible way.

--
   __("<         Marcin Kowalczyk
   \__/       xxxxxx@knm.org.pl
    ^^     http://qrnik.knm.org.pl/~qrczak/