Please describe exactly what actions triggered the bug and the precise symptoms of the bug:
This may be excessively trivial, but in the interest of completeness... The Emacs Calc "History and Acknowledgements" node contains the following phrase: "Emacs Lisp doesn't have built-in floating point math, so it had to be simulated in software. In fact, Emacs integers will only comfortably fit six decimal digits or so--not enough for a decent calculator." This statement was correct when originally written, but has not been true for some time. I think the original text should not be changed, as it is a first-person not from the author to the reader, but a footnote could be added. A prototype patch follows:
Index: calc.texi =================================================================== RCS file: /cvsroot/emacs/emacs/man/calc.texi,v retrieving revision 1.87 diff -u -p -c -r1.87 calc.texi cvs diff: conflicting specifications of output style *** calc.texi 15 Sep 2006 17:44:51 -0000 1.87 --- calc.texi 19 Dec 2006 01:30:59 -0000 *************** solid implementation of Lisp, and the hu *** 1540,1554 **** turned out to be more open-ended than one might have expected. Emacs Lisp doesn't have built-in floating point math, so it had to be ! simulated in software. In fact, Emacs integers will only comfortably ! fit six decimal digits or so---not enough for a decent calculator. So ! I had to write my own high-precision integer code as well, and once I had ! this I figured that arbitrary-size integers were just as easy as large ! integers. Arbitrary floating-point precision was the logical next step. ! Also, since the large integer arithmetic was there anyway it seemed only ! fair to give the user direct access to it, which in turn made it practical ! to support fractions as well as floats. All these features inspired me ! to look around for other data types that might be worth having. Around this time, my friend Rick Koshi showed me his nifty new HP-28 calculator. It allowed the user to manipulate formulas as well as --- 1540,1557 ---- turned out to be more open-ended than one might have expected. Emacs Lisp doesn't have built-in floating point math, so it had to be ! simulated in [EMAIL PROTECTED] floating point support was ! added to Emacs in version 19. This feature does not, however, support ! arbitrary precision, unlike Calc.}. In fact, Emacs integers will only ! comfortably fit six decimal digits or so---not enough for a decent ! calculator. So I had to write my own high-precision integer code as ! well, and once I had this I figured that arbitrary-size integers were ! just as easy as large integers. Arbitrary floating-point precision ! was the logical next step. Also, since the large integer arithmetic ! was there anyway it seemed only fair to give the user direct access to ! it, which in turn made it practical to support fractions as well as ! floats. All these features inspired me to look around for other data ! types that might be worth having. Around this time, my friend Rick Koshi showed me his nifty new HP-28 calculator. It allowed the user to manipulate formulas as well as
In GNU Emacs 22.0.91.10 (i686-pc-linux-gnu, X toolkit) of 2006-12-17 on maru X server distributor `The X.Org Foundation', version 11.0.70101000 configured using `configure '--without-toolkit-scroll-bars'' -- Michael Welsh Duggan ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
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