> I favor the policy of turning numerical work over to Lisp when ever
> possible. Other than possible bugs in the numerical functions in Lisp,
> what are arguments against doing this?
I agree entirely that we should turn numerical work over to the
underlying Lisp whenever possible, but we should keep the
implementation-independent version somewhere in the source (though not
normally used) in order to: a) preserve future portability to platforms
which may not have all these functions built-in; b) as a backup if there
are bugs in the underlying Lisp versions; c) to have cross-checks
(machine vs. Maxima vs. bfloat).
-s
PS In Maxima 5.5, the cross-check goes the other way: it is the
**bfloat** acosh (and xacosh) that is grossly wrong because of the
fpplus problem already reported and fixed by Ray Toy. The machine acosh
is good to the last bit.
PPS Taylor of acosh is wrong. (Submitted as bug 623165.)