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Timeline for Why do we still use floats?

Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0

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Nov 18, 2015 at 9:27 comment added Michaël Le Barbier @5gon12eder TeX is a typesetting program, not a drawing program. IMHO the problem is rather the “hey let's write a LaTeX package to support graphics” approach, while it would be better to use a dedicated tool. That tool happens to exist, it is called METAPOST and bsdowl makes it easy to blend these images in a LaTeX document.
Oct 30, 2015 at 15:04 comment added 5gon12eder How great the TeX approach works unravels when you use the tikz package, because, hey, we'll never need to multiply two lengths…
Jun 18, 2015 at 21:57 comment added user40989 @MarcusJ FPU is for scientific computations (in their broadest sense) and the OP suggests to use integers for some scientific computations (positions in solar system). Fixed precision is not easier (divide money in small fractions). What the average user might need is arbitrary precision arithmetic for basic algebra or FPUs if the exponential must be part of the mixture.
Jun 16, 2015 at 5:23 comment added MarcusJ Every single one of your examples is of a scientific nature, which is exactly what OP suggested FPUs be reserved for. what does the average user use that's impossible to represent in a 64 bit signed/unsigned integer?
Mar 27, 2015 at 6:35 comment added robert bristow-johnson boy, i could really disagree with points 3 and 4. and, if you gotta lotta bits in your fixed-point representation (like 64 or 128), all you need to know that your numbers are below the ceiling. maybe by a few orders of magnitude. about point 4, a moving average computation will work better in fixed point
Jan 13, 2015 at 1:07 history edited Robert Harvey CC BY-SA 3.0
added 7 characters in body
Jan 20, 2014 at 14:06 comment added user40989 I clarified that the value of Pi I gave is an approximation.
Jan 20, 2014 at 8:21 history edited user40989 CC BY-SA 3.0
Insist on the value of Pi being an approximation
Jan 17, 2014 at 21:30 comment added John R. Strohm 3.14159265358979..., if I remember correctly. See piday.org/million
Jan 17, 2014 at 16:01 history edited user40989 CC BY-SA 3.0
Improve phrasing and consistance
Jan 17, 2014 at 12:40 history answered user40989 CC BY-SA 3.0