Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!clyde.concordia.ca!uunet!sco!gorn!filbo
From: filbo@gorn.santa-cruz.ca.us (Bela Lubkin)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.tech
Subject: Re: Revised DR2D specification
Message-ID: <107.filbo@gorn.santa-cruz.ca.us>
Date: 17 Dec 89 00:00:14 GMT
References: <9310006@hpfcso.HP.COM>
Lines: 29
X-Claimer: I >am< R Pentomino!

In article <9310006@hpfcso.HP.COM> Ross Cunniff writes:
>Here is a revised DR2D format that responds to some of the comments
>posted here or e-mailed.  The changes include:
[...]
>The single change which some people have requested that is NOT here is:
>coordinates are still in IEEE format.  The arguments for changing them are:
>
>	* Hard to read and parse
>		not true; see my previous response on this where I give
>		a 20-line C routine to convert to fixed-point notation
[...]

Ross, I think you miss the point of this argument.  >*It is not always
POSSIBLE to insert an arbitrary 20 lines of C code*< into a program.
Where does this leave programmers who are writing in BASIC, Forth, Lisp,
ARexx, database languages, etc.?  There are some now, there will be more
later, programs and programming languages that have built-in tools for
manipulating IFF structures but which have no support either for IEEE
number formats OR bit-twiddling.  Up to now the IFF spec has been kept
free of floating point.  Whatever your arguments for it, they are not as
strong as that.

Here is one line of C code to translate from integer to IEEE:

  coordinate=icoordinate*scalefactor;

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