combining typed arrays with decimal fraction

[wojdyr]

What would you think about combining decimal fractions (tag 4) with typed arrays from this proposal?

In a similar way as a single number can be stored as a pair of exponent and mantissa:

5.6 -> {C4}(-1, 56)

an array of numbers could be expressed as, for example, a single exponent and an array of mantissas:

[1.2, 3.4, 5.6, 7.8, 9.0] -> {C4}(-1, [12, 34, 56, 78, 90])

Decimal fractions are not as popular as integers and floating point numbers, which makes it not as important, but I think it'd be a neat extension.

[cabo]

It seems to be that this also could be applied to arrays that do not follow the typed array representation. I'm not sure we can retroactively change tag 4 to apply to arrays of integers as well, but we could define one or more scale tags for this purpose. For the typed array draft on which this is a comment, I don't see a need for change.

Apologies for having missed this issue for so long. Still interested?

[wojdyr]

What I had in mind was a compact representation of an array of numbers, like this:

20.885,20.892,20.046,20.03,18.641,20.285,20.344,20.327,21.358,19.115,19.06,17.979,17.112,15.77,15.219,16.305,16.327,15.361,17.616,18.735,19.899,18.708,17.472,21.352,22.45,21.117

but with several thousands of elements.
My thinking was that to make it most compact it could be stored in a typed array of 16-bit integers, with exponent -3 stored only once.
It would be even more effective if combined with delta encoding, which would need to be another tag and proposal.
But since I don't have any immediate use for it, perhaps it's best if I close this issue.

[cabo]

Hi Marcin,

this is indeed not an issue on the array-tags document, but I would like to keep the issue alive. I just don't have a document to attach it to...