From: the.beez.speaks@gmail.com   
      
   On 07-07-2025 05:48, dxf wrote:   
   > On 6/07/2025 9:30 pm, Anton Ertl wrote:   
   >> dxf  writes:   
   >>> On 5/07/2025 6:49 pm, Anton Ertl wrote:   
   >>>> dxf  writes:   
   >>>> [8 stack items on the FP stack]   
   >>>>> Puzzling because of a thread here not long ago in which scientific users   
   >>>>> appear to suggest the opposite.  Such concerns have apparently been   
   around   
   >>>>> a long time:   
   >>>>>   
   >>>>> https://groups.google.com/g/comp.lang.forth/c/CApt6AiFkxo/m/wwZmc_Tr1PcJ   
   >>>>   
   >>>> I have read through the thread.  It's unclear to me which scientific   
   >>>> users you have in mind.  My impression is that 8 stack items was   
   >>>> deemed sufficient by many, and preferable (on 387) for efficiency   
   >>>> reasons.   
   >>>   
   >>> AFAICS both Skip Carter (proponent) and Julian Noble were suggesting the   
   >>> 6 level minimum were inadequate.   
   >>   
   >> Skip Carter did not post in this thread, but given that he proposed   
   >> the change, he probably found 6 to be too few; or maybe it was just a   
   >> phenomenon that we also see elsewhere as range anxiety.  In any case,   
   >> he made no such proposal to Forth-200x, so apparently the need was not   
   >> pressing.   
   >>   
   >> Julian Noble ignored the FP stack size issue in his first posting in   
   >> this thread, unlike the separate FP stack size issue, which he   
   >> supported.  So it seems that he did not care about a larger FP stack   
   >> size.  In the other posting he endorsed moving FP stack items to the   
   >> data stack, but he did not write why; for all we know he might have   
   >> wanted that as a first step for getting the mantissa, exponent and   
   >> sign of the FP value as integer (and the other direction for   
   >> synthesizing FP numbers from these parts).   
   >   
   > He appears to dislike the idea of standard-imposed minimums (e.g. Carter's   
   > suggestion of 16) but suggested:   
   >   
   >    a) the user can offload to memory if necessary from   
   >    fpu hardware;   
   >   
   >    b) an ANS FLOATING and FLOATING EXT wordset includes   
   >    the necessary hooks to extend the fp stack.   
      
   In 4tH, there are two (highlevel) FP-systems - with 6 predetermined   
   configurations. Configs number 0-2 don't have an FP stack, they use the   
   datastack. 3-5 have a separate FP stack - and double the precision. The   
   standard FP stacksize is 16, you can extend it by defining a constant   
   before including the FP libs.   
      
   Hans Bezemer   
      
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