Re: 754R draft updated for meeting of 16 June

[Jason Riedy <ejr@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

 - The most notable change is the addition of an appallingly long table of all
 - the operations defined in the draft.

Oh.  My.  Goodness.

Way back in August of 2001, we removed the tables.  The stated
reasons (http://grouper.ieee.org/groups/754/meeting-minutes/01-08-15.html):
  Tables are hard to get right; development in parallel with a
  text standard is difficult. Zuras - over the years, many
  implementation arguments were resolved by reference to specific
  sentences in 754. Delp - doesn't want to postpone tables to the
  end of the process for fear they might be wrong.

Later:
  The tables will be added later, perhaps not in the same format.

 - This table is no doubt full of errors, but the larger question is
 - what questions is this table supposed to answer by providing a
 - shorthand way of referring to groups of operations.

And these were precisely the arguments as to why we delayed
the tables in 2001.  The fact that the same arguments are being
repeated makes me wonder if we're ready for the tables...

 - Short table entries to not necessarily do justice to some complex
 - situations, which is why summary tables tend to be misleading or
 - so heavily footnoted that they are no shorter than that which they
 - were intended to summarize.

This all sounds so very familiar.

One alternative to large tables is to provide mini-tables for
each group of similar operations in the operations section.  I'm
considering this for a language binding proposal (no, not ready
yet, sorry).

Jason