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Copyright 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003 Free Software Foundation.
Contributed by the Spaces project, INRIA Lorraine.

This file is part of the MPFR Library.

The MPFR Library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License (either version 2.1
of the License, or, at your option, any later version) and the GNU General
Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation (most of MPFR is
under the former, some under the latter).

The MPFR Library is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but
WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY
or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the GNU Lesser General Public
License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU Lesser General Public License
along with the MPFR Library; see the file COPYING.LIB.  If not, write to
the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place - Suite 330, Boston, MA
02111-1307, USA.

##############################################################################

Documentation:

- add a description of the algorithms used + proof of correctness

Installation:

- from Kevin Ryde <user42@zip.com.au>:
  Determine the exp2/exp3 thresholds using tune/tuneup.c.
  A start has been made on this, but there's a noticable step-effect
  in the times making them cross back and forward between which is
  faster.  Hopefully this will go away with improvements to the exp
  code.

Changes in existing functions:

- use (LDBL_MAX/2)+(LDBL_MAX/4*LDBL_EPSILON) instead of loop in tset_ld
	to get largest power of 2 that fits in a long double
	[and avoid overflow exceptions in tests, for example adding
	#if MPFR_HAVE_TESTS_x86
	  x86_fldcw (x86_fstcw () & ~8);
	#endif
	in mpfr_test_init to enable overflow exceptions]
	
- allow the ISO C "P" exponent separator for base 16 in input functions
- invert 2nd and 3rd arguments of mpfr_round_prec (to be coherent with
	mpfr_set_prec)
- merge mpfr_inp_str and mpfr_set_str (cf glibc sscanf/fscanf)
	[mpfr_set_str -> with final '\0',
	 mpfr_strtofr -> without final '\0', returns the number of characters
	 read (or name mpfr_strtod suggested by Kevin, see below)]
 Suggestion from Kevin:
 - Function: char * mpf_strto (mpz_t ROP, const char *STR)
     Read a floating point number from a string.  If successful the
     result is stored in ROP and the return value points to the
     character after those parsed.  If STR doesn't start with a valid
     number then the return value is `NULL' and the value in ROP is
     undefined.

     Parsing follows the standard C `strtod' function (*note Parsing of
     Integers: (libc)Parsing of Integers.).  This means optional
     leading whitespace, an optional `+' or `-', mantissa digits, and an
     optional exponent consisting of an `e' or `E', an optional sign,
     and digits.  A hex mantissa can be given with a leading `0x' or
     `0X', in which case `p' or `P' introduces the exponent (still in
     decimal).  In addition `inf' or `infinity' with an optional sign,
     or `nan' or `nan(..chars..)', all non case significant, can be
     given.

     There must be at least one digit in the mantissa for the number to
     be valid.  If an exponent has no digits it's ignored and parsing
     stops after the mantissa.  If an `0x' or `0X' is not followed by
     hexadecimal digits, parsing stops after the `0'.

     Note that in the hex format the exponent represents a power of 2,
     ie. the result is MANTISSA*2^EXPONENT.  This is as per the `%a'
     format in `printf' (*note Formatted Output Strings::).

     `mpf_t' does not currently support NaNs or infinities.  The value
     stored to ROP for these is undefined.

     The decimal point character, or string, expected is taken from the
     current locale on systems providing `localeconv'. [end of suggestion]
- in mpfr_set_str, make string comparisons case insensitive and use @Inf@
  and @NaN@ instead of the possibly ambiguous Inf and NaN in bases > 10.
  Modify the other functions to make them consistent with this choice.
  Possibly accept other strings, like those accepted by strtod.

New functions to implement:

- modf (to extract integer and fractional parts), suggested by
	Dmitry Antipov <dmitry.antipov@mail.ru> Thu, 13 Jun 2002
- mpz_set_fr (to set a mpz from a mpfr, with a rounding mode)
	-> cf code in leibniz:mpfr/mpz_set_fr.c
- those from LIA: missing secant, cosecant, cotangent (trigo/hyperbolic)
- atan2
- mpfr_set_float (MPF -> float) or mpfr_strtof (idem for mpfr_get_*)
- implement accurate summation algorithms from Demmel
	(http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~demmel/AccurateSummation.ps)

Rounding:

- mpfr_pow isn't completely specified (concerning signed zeros).

Efficiency:

- implement range reduction in sin/cos/tan for large arguments
	(currently too slow for 2^1024)
- mpfr_asin/acos are too slow for small values (2^(-1021) for example)
- idem for mpfr_atanh (2^(-1021) for example)
- improve generic.c to work for number of terms <> 2^k
- rewrite mpfr_greater_p...
- combine tests for singular values [from Torbjorn Granlund]:
    For example, mpfr_add could have this structure:
    if (MPFR_SINGULAR (a))
      ...
    else if (MPFR_SINGULAR (b)
      ...
    else
      plain operands
- mpf_t uses a scheme where the number of limbs actually present can
  be less than the selected precision, thereby allowing low precision
  values (for instance small integers) to be stored and manipulated in
  an mpf_t efficiently.

  Perhaps mpfr should get something similar, especially if looking to
  replace mpf with mpfr, though it'd be a major change.  Alternately
  perhaps those mpfr routines like mpfr_mul where optimizations are
  possible through stripping low zero bits or limbs could check for
  that (this would be less efficient but easier).

Miscellaneous:

- rename mpf2mpfr.h to gmp-mpf2mpfr.h?

- from Kevin Ryde <user42@zip.com.au>:
   Also for pi.c, a pre-calculated compiled-in pi to a few thousand
   digits would be good value I think.  After all, say 10000 bits using
   1250 bytes would still be small compared to the code size!
   Store pi in round to zero mode (to recover other modes).

- problem when reading a float followed by a character, for example 1.5*x
	[from Fabrice.Rouillier@loria.fr, Mon, 04 Dec 2000]

- use AC_CHECK_FUNCS for __setfpucw rather than grepping a header file.

- rename (and rewrite) mpfr_isinteger to mpfr_integer_p.
	(Kevin Ryde, 05 Mar 2002)

- use GMP rand/srand functions instead for SEED_RAND (time(NULL)). Kevin:
  GMP tests/misc.c has a scheme to print the seed chosen and allow for a
  re-run with a given seed.  If you moved towards _gmp_rand and friends
  at some stage you could probably use that scheme almost unchanged.
  An advantage of _gmp_rand of course is that it's the same on all
  systems, apart from limb size, so you're not at the mercy of random or
  lrand48, etc.

- randomized tests: do like GMP (see misc.c), but using MPFR_CHECK_RANDOMIZE

- add tests for nextabove/nextbelow/nexttoward.

- documentation and tests for:
                         =     <     >     unordered
mpfr_greater_p           0     0     1     0
mpfr_greaterequal_p      1     0     1     0
mpfr_less_p              0     1     0     0
mpfr_lessequal_p         1     1     0     0
mpfr_lessgreater_p       0     1     1     0
mpfr_equal_p             1     0     0     0
mpfr_unordered_p         0     0     0     1


Reentrancy / Thread-Safety:

- Temporary changes to emin/emax are not safe (all uses of
  mpfr_save_emin_emax, eg. mpfr_set_q).

- Global variables for caching in mpfr_const_log2 and mpfr_const_pi
  are not safe.


Portability:

- MINGW has neither random() nor rand48(), making the setups in
  mpfr-test.h fail.  It does have rand(), returning just 15 bits.
  Switching to gmp_randstate_t etc would be better.

- _mpfr_ceil_log2 is IEEE specific.  Many callers only seem to want
  this operation on an integer, which could be done with
  count_leading_zeros from longlong.h.

Possible future MPF / MPFR integration:

- mpf routines can become "extern inline"s calling mpfr equivalents,
  probably just with GMP_RNDZ hard coded, since that's what mpf has
  always done.

- Want to preserve the mpf_t size, for binary compatibility.  Breaking
  compatibility would cause lots of pain and potential subtle breakage
  for users.  If the fields in mpf_t are not enough then extra space
  under _mp_d can be used.

- mpf_sgn has been a macro directly accessing the _mp_size field, so a
  compatible representation would be required.  At worst that field
  could be maintained for mpf_sgn, but not otherwise used internally.

  mpf_sgn should probably throw an exception if called with NaN, since
  there's no useful value it can return, so it might want to become a
  function.  Inlined copies in existing binaries would hopefully never
  see a NaN, if they only do old-style mpf things.

- mpfr routines replacing mpf routines must be reentrant and thread
  safe, since of course that's what has been documented for mpf.