J3/06-340 Date: 31 October 2006 To: J3 From: Dick Hendrickson Subject: Clause 4 BITS problems References: J3/06-007R1, 06-278 This is a reworking of the bits parts of paper 06-278 which was deferred from meeting 177. [53:30] Must the additional representation methods be dense like the ones up to 4*(integer size) are. Or, could a processor allow 1 through 128 and then 143 and 231? [54:27-28] Is this what we want? For integers surely all processors overflow for 9999999999999_TwoByteKind. Ditto for 1.0E666666666666_IEEEsingle. Why would anyone want to just use the right hand bits of a typed constant? If we really want to allow a digits from a constant to be thrown away from the left, then [41:12-13] should be reworded to say that bit values are not completely specified.