Windows / font / text futures ...

[Noel Grandin]

On 2016/03/08 10:42 AM, Stephan Bergmann wrote:
>> While this is an issue for actual math on potentially very large or
>> very small numbers (which is, I assume, why calc is careful with it),
>> and an issue for games with large 3D worlds, it can hardly be an issue
>> for the magnitudes of numbers we deal with in the font rendering
>> paths.
>
> Are you sure?  TeX for example is very careful with its calculations to ensure consistent layout across implementations,
> regardless of available floating-point functionality.


Given that TeX was written before there was an IEEE floating point standard, and in an era where floating point hardware 
was not even universally available, its choice is not surprising.

But that should not restrict our options today :-)