Re: S/360

James J. Weinkam wrote:

(snip regarding mantissa)

> In my opinion, the best practice is to use the terms significand and 
> exponent and avoid the misleading use or mantissa and characteristic, 
> but it is impossible to undo history so we will no doubt continue to see

> the misuse of mantissa and characteristic.

I have read discussions about logarithmic systems where instead of 
fraction (or significand) and exponent the mantissa and characteristic 
of the log of the desired value are stored.  This makes multiply easy 
and add hard, though, but in that case mantissa does describe the stored 
value.

-- glen