Re: Information Systems Annex was RE: Dispatching and generics - language lawyer question

[dewar@gnat.com (Robert Dewar)]

"Robert C. Leif" <rleif@rleif.com> wrote in message news:<mailman.1029362042.2405.comp.lang.ada@ada.eu.org>...
> Since virtually all of these decimal types will be 
> intermediates in a
> calculation, they could all have the same number of 
> digits.

I really have no idea what the above means.

> The delta is
> the problem.

Ditto


> My crude workaround was to turn a non-static number into 
> a static number by either a pragma or a method.

And double ditto here. Robert please explain at least vaguely what you
have in mind. What on earth does it mean
to turn a non-static number into a static number. You are
certainly not using the term static in the Ada sense, or
in any other common sense that I can guess.

> However, I would be happy
> with a decimal floating type. 

This seems to be of very marginal use to me. Certainly not
something to build into the language. If you need such a
facility, just program it, that's easy enough, Yes, it
will be inefficient, but no more or less inefficient than
if it is put in the language, since obviously no machines
support this at the hardware level, and all the compiler
would do is call runtime routines anyway. So all you are
talking about here is a minor bit of syntactic convenience
for a feature with very limited use. Hardly a good candidate for a
language extension.