[gmpi] Re: Reqs final draft



>doesn't it make sense that an exception due to the math unit is the LAST 
thing you'd want in your mixing thread? Those can crash an app real bad.

Catching exceptions is great.. when you debug your code. 

i am really not sure what happens on Windows, but catching FPU
exceptions on any POSIX system is simplicity itself (barring the usual
complications of mixing threads with POSIX signals).

the fact that an exception will be generated does not mean that an
application will crash, quite the opposite: its an opportunity for the
host to discover a buggy plugin and deal with it appropriately.


it means that the application will probably crash if you DON'T catch the exception, or if you catch/handle it far from where it occured



Note that the FPU precision can be critical in some cases. There are fast
tricks to truncate floats, and if the precision is not what you expect, they
will just not work. But ok, a plugin that uses them will probably set the
precision itself for safety. 

this is an artifact of the terrible float/int design of the x86. not
that this doesn't mean its an important issue, but its not universal.


it will be less important since the SSE, but still important. Yes of course, linked to x86's, so important for more than half of us here.



anyway, the point is that so far, there are 2 choices mentioned:

a) plugins may not change FPU state in any way

no, of course a plugin may change the FPU state, you can't require a plugin not to change it


b) plugins may change FPU state but must restore it if they do


yes, what we're fighting about is.. what it should restore it to




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