Desirable floating-point arithmetic and elementary functions for numerical computation

The purpose of this paper is to summarize proposed specifications for floating-point arithmetic and elementary functions. The topics considered are: the base of the number system, precision control, number representation, arithmetic operations, mother basic operations, elementary functions, and exception handling. The possibility of doing without fixed-point arithmetic is also discussed. The specifications are intended to be entirely at the level of a programming language such as Fortran. The emphasis is on convenience and simplicity from the user\´s point of view. The specifications are not complete in every detail, but it is intended that they be complete "in spirit" - some further details, especially syntatic details, would have to be provided, but the proposals are otherwise relatively complete.