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From: lamaster@pioneer.arpa (Hugh LaMaster)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: byte order: be reasonable - do it my way...
Message-ID: <203@ames.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 22-Jan-87 17:29:53 EST
Article-I.D.: ames.203
Posted: Thu Jan 22 17:29:53 1987
Date-Received: Fri, 23-Jan-87 06:36:06 EST
References: <760@orcisi.UUCP> <112@lmi-angel.UUCP> <172@ames.UUCP> <1116@steinmetz.steinmetz.UUCP> <11858@sun.uucp>
Sender: usenet@ames.UUCP
Reply-To: lamaster@ames-pioneer.arpa(Hugh LaMaster)
Organization: NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif.
Lines: 42
Keywords: byte order, big-endian, little-endian

In article <11858@sun.uucp> guy%gorodish@Sun.COM (Guy Harris) writes:
>
>A couple of points:
>
>	1) The aesthetics of an architecture is rather subjective.  Person

           Agreed.  I note, though, that wierd (e.g. VAX floating point)
           data formats can, in addition to being unaesthetic, cost
           users real money when they need to move data between machines
           of different types.
 
>
>	2) The chances that any given vendor will change their byte order
>	   because 1) people say the current one is ugly or 2) some
>	   committee decides that the other byte order is the One True
>	   Way are somewhere between zip and nil.  You're just going to
>	   have to live with different byte orders, and use data
>	   representation conventions when exchanging data between machines.

           I have to disagree with this.  When the IEEE floating point
           standard was first proposed, everyone said that that it would
           never fly.  Well, it has been almost ten years, but in fact
           almost all new workstations and minicomputers are using it.
           If bit-byte-word order can be resolved, in ten years everyone
           will be using it.  And, in the meantime, software could be
           written knowing what the standard order will be.

           In any case, with networked environments becoming the norm,
           lots of sites are going to want to be able to move binary
           data between machines.  Don't expect that this issue will
           go away.


   Hugh LaMaster, m/s 233-9,   UUCP:  {seismo,hplabs}!nike!pioneer!lamaster 
   NASA Ames Research Center   ARPA:  lamaster@ames-pioneer.arpa
   Moffett Field, CA 94035     ARPA:  lamaster%pioneer@ames.arpa
   Phone:  (415)694-6117       ARPA:  lamaster@ames.arc.nasa.gov

"He understood the difference between results and excuses."

("Any opinions expressed herein are solely the responsibility of the
author and do not represent the opinions of NASA or the U.S. Government")