[Numpy-discussion] Does float16 exist?

[Eric Firing]

Bill Baxter wrote:
> On Jan 9, 2008 9:18 AM, Charles R Harris <charlesr.harris at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Jan 8, 2008 5:01 PM, Bill Baxter <wbaxter at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> On Jan 9, 2008 8:03 AM, Charles R Harris <charlesr.harris at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>>> On Jan 8, 2008 1:58 PM, Bill Baxter < wbaxter at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>> If you're really going to try to do it, Charles, there's an
>>>>> implementation of float16 in the OpenEXR toolkit.
>>>>> http://www.openexr.com/
>>>>>
>>>>> Or more precisely it's in the files in the Half/ directory of this:
>>>>>
>> http://download.savannah.nongnu.org/releases/openexr/ilmbase-1.0.1.tar.gz
>>>>> I don't know if it's IEEE conformant or not (especially w.r.t. NaN's
>>>>> and such) but it should be a good start.  The code seems to be well
>>>>> documented.
>>>> The license looks good, essentially BSD. The code is all C++, which is
>> the
>>>> obvious way to go for this sort of thing, and I would like to stick with
>> it,
>>>> but that could lead to build/compatibility problems. I think NumPy
>> itself
>>>> should really be in C++.  Maybe scons can help with the build.
>>> Yeh, I was just thinking you'd rip out and C-ify the main algorithms
>>> rather than trying to wrap it as-is.
>> I'd rather not C-ify the thing, I'd rather C++-ify parts of NumPy. I note
>> that MatPlotLab uses C++, so some of the problems must have been solved.

A big chunk of C++ in matplotlib has just been replaced, largely because 
it was so hard to understand and extend for everyone but its author. 
There is still C++ code as well as C code in mpl.  Personally, I prefer 
the C.

> 
> If you think that's easier then go for it.

The opinion that C++ would improve numpy is not universal, and has been 
discussed.

http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.python.numeric.general/13244

Eric


> 
> As far as classes go, though, you pretty much won't find anything
> easier than this to C-ify.  Or just to wrap in C.  No templates.  No
> inheritance.  Just a simple value-type struct that supports a small
> set of operations.
> 
> --bb
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