From: antispam@fricas.org   
      
   John Levine  wrote:   
   > 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.)   
      
   If you have read und understand what I wrote (and you snipped), you   
   would see that I handle distribution of numbers.  Hint: the point of   
   talking abount hex order of magnitude and binary orders of magnitude   
   is to compare both distributions.   
      
   > There are on average two leading zeros so only half of the values are   
   > normalized.   
      
   No.  By _definition_ hex floating point number is normalized if and   
   only if its leading hex digit is different than zero.  It is easy   
   to check that different normalized hex bit pattern produce different   
   values.   
      
   --   
                                 Waldek Hebisch   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
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