Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!sun-barr!lll-winken!unixhub!shelby!neon!kaufman
From: kaufman@Neon.Stanford.EDU (Marc T. Kaufman)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.misc
Subject: Re: The New Macs: Greedy Compromises?
Message-ID: <1990Dec8.173622.19791@Neon.Stanford.EDU>
Date: 8 Dec 90 17:36:22 GMT
References: <1990Nov29.203507.25984@grape.ecs.clarkson.edu> <46966@apple.Apple.COM> <1990Dec2.084149.25494@world.std.com>
Organization: Computer Science Department, Stanford University
Lines: 16

In article <1990Dec2.084149.25494@world.std.com> boris@world.std.com (Boris Levitin) writes:

>Regarding your assertion that the average user doesn't do anything that
>uses an FPU: besides spreadsheets, there are Adobe Type Manager and TrueType
>(I don't know for a fact that TrueType makes use of the FPU, but if it doesn't,
>it must be really slow).  Using quadratic (TrueType) or cubic (ATM) splines to
>display text on the screen is a very floating-point-math-intensive process.

Quadratic and cubic splines are generally computed on an iterative basis,
using first (and second) differences -- all easily done with fixed point
(i.e. integer) arithmetic.  The '020 and '030 will have a slight advantage
because of their ability to do 64 bit math.  The algorithms are extensions
of Breshenham's circle algorithms, and can be found in The SIGGRAPH proceedings
for the July 1985 conference in an article by Vaughn Pratt (pp 151-159).

Marc Kaufman (kaufman@Neon.stanford.edu)