From Keith.Bierman@Eng.Sun.COM  Wed May  7 18:54:53 1997
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To: malcolm@nag.co.uk (Malcolm Cohen)
cc: SC22WG5@dkuug.dk
Subject: Re: (SC22WG5.1375) Floating-point arithmetic 
In-reply-to: Your message of "Wed, 07 May 1997 12:27:46 -0000."
             <199705071132.NAA03704@dkuug.dk> 
Date: Wed, 07 May 1997 09:50:29 -0700
From: Keith Bierman QED <Keith.Bierman@Eng.Sun.COM>


>IEEE 754 has no rationale for directed roundings (section 4.2).

The authors of the IEEE 754 standard produced a bevy of papers at the
time describing motovation and applications. It doesn't take mind
reading or personal communication with the authors ... just a good
reference library ;>

>interval arithmetic.  Almost all of IEEE 754 has general applicability.

I suspect that rpc was refering to some of the lesser appreciated
aspects of 754 which, among other things, disallow compile time
constant folding.