Standard for Network Floating Point Numbers

[Mike Muuss]

Just as a "heads up", I'd like you to know that I am currently writing
an RFC that documents BRL's Standard for Network Floating Point Numbers.
Because we chose to use the IEEE 754 representation, sent in Big-Endian
order, I suspect that there should not be a whole lot of debate about
such a standard.  We also have library routines (in C) that convert
between network order and local host order for hosts using IEEE, IBM,
DEC VAX, and Cray formats, which we are placing into the public domain.

The efficient transmission of floating point data is very significant
to the scientific computing community, so I think the time is ripe for
defining such a format.

I hope to have this RFC to you in 2-4 weeks.
	Best,
	 -Mike