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List:       koffice-devel
Subject:    Re: RFC: Arbitrary precision in KSpread ?
From:       Tomas Mecir <mecirt () gmail ! com>
Date:       2005-01-22 15:38:20
Message-ID: 492258b1050122073820b1b5a () mail ! gmail ! com
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On Sat, 22 Jan 2005 16:26:07 +0100, Nicolas Goutte <nicolasg@snafu.de> wrote:

> > If not, then how would we decide, whether a particular number should
> > be GnuMP-ized or not  ? In the parser I mean...
> 
> Not really sure either. At first I had the idea of something like
> MP("3.14")

Hm, maybe. Of course, it would be best if the arbitrary precision
"just worked" But then, some numbers (like PI), just cannot be
represented, no matter how high precision you have. Hrm. Maybe having
an option somewhere in settings, that says, compute with precision X.
Then we could use doubles by default, and switch to MP upon request...

> > Ummm... what? Like, having extra functions for GnuMP-based
> > computations? Not sure if this is a good idea... How would we tell
> > KSpread that number A is to be represented using GnuMP, and number B
> > is not?
> 
> Well, you have strings, double... so you can have MP too.

Sure, but I was thinking about the end-user's perspective... Maybe
that option would be the best idea...

> In the meantime, I have had the idea that you can try to use "long double" to
> help testing your abstract class. You would not need an extra library but you
> could test a switch between double and something else.

Well, problem here is, that we wouldn't really test much, as the
compiler can convert stuff double <-> long double ...


 
> (Of course having complex numbers make it again different than OOo Calc, but I
> suppose that this would be a very long term goal anyway. But perhaps we
> should not close that door, if possible. (That is also something that I
> thought about, last night.)

Mmmm... Complex numbers might be interesting too... Heh, we may end up
with KSpread being turned into some computer algebra system
eventually... ;)

> > So, in short, it's all about whether having increased precision would
> > be worth the slower execution...
> Perhaps you could make a little test application ,somewhere in one of
> kdeplayground modules. (That is just an idea...)

What test application ? Like, the parser separated from the rest ? Hmmm ...

/ Tomas
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