Precision and CD's

[J H Davenport]

>>> J H Davenport wrote:
>>> > 
>>> > I think you're being harsh on what David set out to achieve.

>>> There was no intention of insulting David, his code, nor your
>>> elegant bigfloat CD proposal --- and I hope none was taken.
Not at all, I merely said that you were harsh on 
"what he was trying to achieve.
>>>   Is it, or should it be, an OM goal that XSL is sufficient to 
>>>   do moderately high quality rendition into MathML?
As I undestand it (and I am far from being an expert!), XSL is not
fixed enough for this to be a sensible goal at this stage. Clearly, if
XSL could call applets, then it would be Turing-complete and (in
principle!) we wouldn't worry.
>>> Or alternatively, the underlying OM representation would be a printable
>>> string. (not perfect either, but...)
True, if you assume that all bases divide a sufficiently high multiple of 10.
I think I prefer the idea of a rendered negotiating for decimal with a 
system, and letting the sytem do its conversion.
James