Port of Giac [Longfloat] Library to HP Prime allowing [Variable Precision] Floating Point Arithmetic

Question

HP Prime CAS is based on Giac, but [ misses ] some of its Special Purpose Libraries like the Giac [ Longfloat ] Library, which if [ Ported ] would allow HP Prime to be the First ( handheld ) Calculator to provide [ Variable Precision ] Floating Point Arithmetic routines ( fully integrated at its CAS Kernel level ). HP Prime already have internal calls to [ Longfloat ] library, but resulting in [ Error Messages ], like when selecting more than 14 Digits in [ evalf ] Numerical evaluation, as for example: evalf( 1/7, 14 ) producing 0.142857142857 and evalf( 1/7, 15 ) resulting in "Longfloat library not available Error: Bad Argument Value" The same happens when one tries to Extend the [ Digits ] variable to a value greater than 13, like Digits := 50 which returns Digits := 13 as output ( from any specified value higher than 13 ).  The porting of [ Longfloat ] library to HP Prime, would open many New opportunities in [ handheld ] Numerical Computation, usually available only on Top Level Computer Algebra Systems, like Maple, Mathematica or Maxima, and also on Giac/XCas. Its worth mentioning that Any [ Smartphone ] with Xcas/Giac App installed, can fully explore [ Variable Precision ] Floating Point Arithmetic, on current ARM based architectures, which means that a Port of [ Longfloat ] Library from Giac to HP Prime, although requiring some considerable amount of labor, is Not an impossible task. The Benefits of such Longfloat [ Porting ] to a handheld Calculator like HP Prime, would put it several levels Up on the list of Top current Calculator Features, miles and miles away from competitors like TI Nspire CX CAS and Casio ClassPad II fx-CP 400 ... Even HP 49/50g have third party developed routines with limited Variable Precision floating point support, while such feature is Not fully integrated to their native CAS Kernel. For those who do not see "plenty" reason for a [ Longfloat ] Porting to HP Prime its needless to say that the PRIMARY reason for ANY [ CALCULATOR ] is to CALCULATE ! and besides Symbolic Computation ( already implemented on all contemporaries top calculator models ), Arbitrary / [ Variable Precision ] Floating Point Arithmetic is simply The TOP of the TOP ( of the IceCream ) in [ Numerical ] Computation ! ( and beside Computer Algebra Manipulation routines, one of the Main reasons for the initial development of the major packages like Maple, Mathematica or Maxima ).

Answer 1

Thanks for the Link to [ HPMuseum.org ] Page with Valuable Details about the Internal Floating Point implementations both on Home and CAS environments of HP Prime. Its interesting to point to the fact that HP 49/50g has a [ Longfloat ] Version 3.93 package implementation ( with the Same Name but Distinct Code from the Giac Library ) available at [ http://www.hpcalc.org/details.php?id=5363 ] Also its worth mentioning [ Wikipedia ] pages on Arbitrary Precision Arithmetic like [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arbitrary-precision_arithmetic ], [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_arbitrary-precision_arithmetic_software ] and [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_computer_algebra_systems ] and the Xcas/Giac project at [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xcas#Giac ] and Official Site at [ http://www-fourier.ujf-grenoble.fr/~parisse/giac.html ] It would be a Dream come True when a Fully Integrated Variable Precision Floting Point Arithmetic package where definetively incorporated to HP Prime CAS Kernel, like the Giac [ Longfloat ] Library, allowing the Prime to be the First calculator with such Resource trully incorporated at its [ Kernel ] level ( and not like an optional third party module as the HP 49/50g one, which lacks complete integration with their respective Kernel, since HP 49/50g does not have native support for Longfloats ).