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authorMattias Andrée <maandree@kth.se>2016-11-29 23:55:29 +0100
committerMattias Andrée <maandree@kth.se>2016-11-29 23:55:29 +0100
commit781e9d05388539d989e3578ebc7f8a7cd038aeb0 (patch)
tree05939095a7ddc9c5da12b48df2c471bf238da2e3 /doc/what-is-libzahl.tex
parentmanual: fix truncated sentence (diff)
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Fix errors in the manual (most of them found by Ivan Zuboff)
Signed-off-by: Mattias Andrée <maandree@kth.se>
Diffstat (limited to 'doc/what-is-libzahl.tex')
-rw-r--r--doc/what-is-libzahl.tex25
1 files changed, 19 insertions, 6 deletions
diff --git a/doc/what-is-libzahl.tex b/doc/what-is-libzahl.tex
index e09d0bd..b0e80f5 100644
--- a/doc/what-is-libzahl.tex
+++ b/doc/what-is-libzahl.tex
@@ -57,8 +57,8 @@ it can still be improved. Furthermore, GNU MP cannot be
used for robust applications.
\item
-LibTomMath is very slow, infact performance is not its
-priority, rather its simplicit is the priority. Despite
+LibTomMath is very slow, in fact performance is not its
+priority, rather its simplicity is the priority. Despite
this, it is not really that simple.
\item
@@ -73,8 +73,8 @@ philosophy.\footnote{\href{http://suckless.org/philosophy}
{http://suckless.org/philosophy}} libzahl is simple,
very fast, simple to use, and can be used in robust
applications. Currently however, it does not support
-multithreading, but it has better support multiprocessing
-and distributed computing than its competitor.
+multithreading, but it has better support for multiprocessing
+and distributed computing than its competitors.
Lesser ``competitors'' (less known) to libzahl include
Hebimath and bsdnt.
@@ -142,10 +142,10 @@ caught using {\tt setjmp}. This ensure that it can be
used in robust applications, catching errors does not
become a mess, and it minimises the overhead of
catching errors. Errors are only checked when they can
-occur, not also after each function-return.
+occur, not also after each function return.
Additionally, libzahl tries to keep the functions'
-names simple and natural rather than techniqual or
+names simple and natural rather than technical or
mathematical. The names resemble those of the standard
integer operators. For example, the left-shift, right-shift
and truncation bit-operations in libzahl are called
@@ -214,6 +214,19 @@ strictly necessary for it to be an CPU-intrinsic,
but that would be favourable for performance.)
\end{itemize}
+Because of the prevalence of theses properties
+in contemporary machines, and the utilisation of
+these properties in software, especially software
+for POSIX and popular platforms with similar
+properties, any new general-purpose machine most
+have these properties lest, it but useless with
+today's software. Therefore, libzahl can make
+the assumption that the machine has these
+properties. If the machine does not have these
+properties, the compiler must compensate for
+these machines deficiencies, making it generally
+slower.
+
These limitations may be removed later. And there
is some code that does not make these assumptions
but acknowledge that it may be a case. On the other