"Simpler" bigfloat and complex bigfloat arithmetic

>>>>> "Raymond" == Raymond Toy <toy.raymond at gmail.com> writes:

    Raymond> I think a long time ago, I talked with Barton about this, and have now
    Raymond> finally gotten a round to implementing it.

    Raymond> I've written a set of CLOS classes to make working with bigfloat and
    Raymond> complex bigfloat numbers easier.  It's a new package "NUMERIC" where the
    Raymond> standard Lisp operations have been shadowed to work with a new bigfloat
    Raymond> and complex-bigfloat numbers.

I've checked in the new package.  It's not quite ready for use, even
though I think I have most things implemented.

Based on some comments, I think I will rename the (Lisp) package from
NUMERIC to BIGFLOAT.  I'm still open to other suggestions of an
appropriate package name.  (Maybe the package could use a nickname of
BF to minimize typing?)

Also, I like Richard's suggestion of using TO.  So, I'll add
BIGFLOAT:TO which will convert CL numbers into either a BIGFLOAT or
COMPLEX-BIGFLOAT object.  It will also convert Maxima's internal
bigfloat representation to a BIGFLOAT object.  I suppose we should
also be able to convert a+b*%i into a COMPLEX-BIGFLOAT.

I'll also add MAXIMA:TO to convert a BIGFLOAT or COMPLEX-BIGFLOAT
object into Maxima's internal representation.

How does that sound?

Ray