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InspirationSources
#this page gives links to previous work in the domain, some of them used as source of inspiration for the ArbitraryPrecisionFloat package.
ArbitraryPrecisionFloat is not born ex-nihilo. Several sources of inspiration have helped implementing the library.
For the core, of course SUN literature about floating point was my main introduction to the subject 25 years ago, and I still recommend reading a copy of the bible What Every Computer Scientist Should Know About Floating-Point Arithmetic.
The main source of inspiration for the math function were:
- Scratchpad (Axiom)
- Michael C. Ring MAPM C package mapm
- David H. Bailey's MPFUN Fortran package at netlib
Of course, one can always visit the dedicated wikipedia pages.
To please Marcus Denker who regularly remind us the existence of a reference INRIA work in the domain, I recommend inquiring also MPFR.
If you know INRIA, you can bet the library is quite more populated than ArbitraryPrecisionFloat.
As MPFR is built upon GMP, it should also be much much faster than a 100% Smalltalk version.
Not sure however if they beat ArbitraryPrecisionFloat for the fun and facility of programming. A Smalltalk environment must have some advantages!
Thus, for casual need, education and experimentation I recommand ArbitraryPrecisionFloat.
For any more involved extensive/intensive usage, it would be reasonnable to switch to above library, or have it linked thru FFI.