strange behaviour with simple decimals (fp comparison)

With respect to this debate, I think it is easy enough for 
each user to set fpprintprec to whatever is felt to be 
"right" in their .maxima/maxima-init.mac file.  (E.g., I 
like small values, like 6, because I normally find too many 
decimals distracting.)

Apart from that, how about focusing on the issue of 
(approximate) equality of floating point numbers?
More generally, on the issue of comparisons.  Knuth Vol. 2, 
sec. 4.2.2, has a set of definitions for approximate 
comparisons of floating point numbers: eqs. (21)-(24).  If 
these were implemented, the additional overhead would be 
little, it seems to me, as they wouldn't be constantly used 
in arithmetic. And an approximate equality, "~", say, might 
help with the problem "is 3*1.4? = 5.88"?

				Kostas