From: johnl@taugh.com   
      
   According to Waldek Hebisch :   
   >Well, IBM format had twice the rage of IEEE format, so effectively one   
   >bit moved from mantissa to exponent.  Looking at representable values   
   >except at low end of the range only nomalized values matter.  In   
   >hex format 15/16 of values are normalized, ...   
      
   That's the same mistake IBM made when they designed the 360's FP.   
   Leading fraction digits are geometrically distributed, not linearly.   
   (Look at a slide rule to see what I mean.)   
      
   There are on average two leading zeros so only half of the values are   
   normalized.   
      
   --   
   Regards,   
   John Levine, johnl@taugh.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for   
   Dummies",   
   Please consider the environment before reading this e-mail. https://jl.ly   
      
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