Difficulties with Flat XML under source control

[Michael Stahl]

On 21/06/12 14:07, Stephan Bergmann wrote:
> On 06/20/2012 03:07 PM, Dennis E. Hamilton wrote:
>> I think it is necessary to look at round-trip out-in conversion preservation.
>>
>> For out-in (which this is, presumably), you want to record a decimal expression of the internal value that will convert back to the exact internal value on re-input.  (The in-out case is that the input conversion provide whatever internal representation that will convert to the read value on re-output.  Without additional information, it is generally very difficult to have these be the same.)
>>
>> It is also desirable, of course, that any other ODF consumer use the same technique so that its in-out conversion satisfies the out-in condition of the original source of the decimal expression of the value.
>>
>> There are old technical papers on how to have this work.  The name David Matula comes to mind.
>>
>> There might be solutions in the conversions that exist in the basic Java classes for float data types.  I think this was addressed in Common Lisp also.
> 
> Hasn't there been progress in that field recently?  Wait, yes, 
> <http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1806623> "Printing floating-point 
> numbers quickly and accurately with integers" by Florian Loitsch.

i am in awe that it's possible to get a paper on this topic published in
this day and age; one would think this kind of problem would have been
solved 30 years ago, and the developers of popular office suites were
just ignorant of the solutions :)