From: user5857@newsgrouper.org.invalid   
      
   antispam@fricas.org (Waldek Hebisch) posted:   
      
   > John Dallman  wrote:   
   > > In article <2026Jan5.100825@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at>,   
   > > anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) wrote:   
   > >   
   > >> Possibly.  But the lack of takeup of the Intel library and of the   
   > >> gcc support shows that "build it and they will come" does not work   
   > >> out for DFP.   
   > >   
   > > The world has got very used to IEEE BFP, and has solutions that work   
   > > acceptably with it. Lots of organisations don't see anything obvious for   
   > > them in DFP.   
   >   
   > AFAICS DFP exists as a standard only because IBM pushed it.  I had   
   > a short e-mail exchange with main DFP advocate at IBM.   
      
   Mike Cowshaw ??   
      
   >                                                         My point   
   > was that purely software implementation of his decimal benchmark had   
   > perfectly adequate performance.  His answer was that he knows this,   
   > but that was hand written code that normal users would not write.   
   > Compilers for Cobol could generate such code, but apparently no   
   > existing compilers supported it.  He claimed that there   
   > must be hardware support to make it widely available.  He somewhat   
   > ignored fact that even with hardware support there still needs   
   > to be support in compilers.  And that C++ templates allow   
   > fast fixed point decimals as library feature.  If there is no   
   > such library (and I am not aware of one) it is due to low   
   > demand and not due to difficulty.   
   >   
   > Anyway, he and IBM succeded pushd the DFP standard, but adoption   
   > is as I and other folks predicted.   
   >   
      
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