[Coco] printing out floating point numbers...(only peripherally related to coco)

[Aaron Banerjee]

All,
   I'm working on a program that can handle floating point numbers with
gobs and gobs of precision.  I'd like to make a float similar to the IEEE
754 standard (1 sign bit, 8 exponent bits, and 23 precision bits), but of
much more precision.  What's more I'd like to be able to do basic
arithmetic with these high-precision floats (e.g. +, - , /, *) quickly,
even on a slow processor.  This sounds like something someone has at least
tried to do at one time on a coco.
   The form of a float I happen to be using is a 32 byte value:

bit 0:       sign         (S)
bits 1-8:    exponent     (E)
bits 9-255:  precision    (F)

where the final value is:

value = (-1)^S * 2^(E-127) * 1.F

Of course, you realize that using regular floats and doubles to evaluate
the above expression would kill off all of the wonderful precision I was
looking for in the first place.  Has anyone ever done anything of the
sort?  How did you solve it (e.g. C++ class?  Assembly?)  

On another note, given such a float, I'm trying to get a good routine to
print them to the screen (or a string).

This actually sounds like something that would be in a textbook somewhere,
but I don't seem to be able to find it.  Thanks in advance for your help.
                - Aaron