[std-interval] response from ISL

George Corliss George.Corliss at marquette.edu
Tue Apr 11 18:03:35 PDT 2006


Sylvain,

In the interest of full and open discussion, I have attached copies of an
informal cover letter and a draft of a possible set of revisions to the
earlier standard proposal our 5SL team had forwarded to you a few weeks ago
so that everyone can read and comment on our comments.

Some of the issue have been extensively debated here in the mean time, but
others have not.  I am most interested in the question of whether the
standard should specify a mathematical model for intervals in the sense
discussed here, and if so, what that model should be.  The attached response
argues that there should be a mathematical model, but that it should be
implementation-defined, since there has not been a consensus.  One of the
threads over the past couple weeks seems to suggest that leaving such an
issue to be defined by the implementation guarantees lack of portability.

"ISL" (Interval Subroutine Library) is a beginning effort to draw together
much existing interval code into a comprehensive, quality library.  Our
current members are
  George F. Corliss  & Marquette University
  R. Baker Kearfott  & University of Louisiana at Lafayette
  Ned Nedialkov      & McMaster University and
                     & Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
  John D. Pryce      & Cranfield University, RMCS Shrivenham
  Spencer Smith      & McMaster University

Clearly, if we are ever to have a portable interval library, it must depend
on a portable interval arithmetic, as this standardization process is
urging.

Dr. George F. Corliss
Electrical and Computer Engineering
Marquette University
PO Box 1881 
1515 W. Wisconsin Ave.
Milwaukee WI 53201-1881 USA
414-288-6599; Fax: 288-5579; Dept. 288-6280
Office: Haggerty Engineering 296
George.Corliss at Marquette.edu


-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: 200603coverletter.pdf
Type: application/octet-stream
Size: 114182 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : http://compgeom.poly.edu/pipermail/std-interval/attachments/20060411/238b2d34/200603coverletter-0001.obj
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: 20060227BronnimannEtAl.doc
Type: application/octet-stream
Size: 281600 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : http://compgeom.poly.edu/pipermail/std-interval/attachments/20060411/238b2d34/20060227BronnimannEtAl-0001.obj


More information about the Std-interval mailing list