Wikibooks:Requests for undeletion/Embedded Systems/Embedded System Basics/Fixed-Point Arithmetic

Embedded Systems/Embedded System Basics/Fixed-Point Arithmetic
Today Embedded Systems/Embedded System Basics/Fixed-Point Arithmetic is a single link to another page. Today when I checked the history of this page, there is only one edit, its creation on 19 May 2007.

When I read its talk page and the few pages that link to it, I get the impression that there used to be something more here long before that. Perhaps this was page deleted when I wasn't watching?

If you have access, would you mind looking for an older version of that page? I'd like to view it (send the entire content to me, or undelete it and send me a ping). Thank you.

--DavidCary 07:02, 27 September 2007 (UTC)
 * There was something before that; you were one of the contributors. I'll let Whiteknight respond before taking any action since he deleted the module (although without putting a reason in the log... tsk tsk :P) – Mike.lifeguard  &#124; talk 13:42, 27 September 2007 (UTC)
 * I just noticed that you wanted to view it, not undelete it. No problem - I've emailed it to you. I still wonder why it was deleted though? – Mike.lifeguard  &#124; talk 13:54, 27 September 2007 (UTC)


 * Wow, it's been a long time, I had to look this up in the logs because I couldnt remember why I deleted it. For a bit of history, you can check out the deletion log for 14 June 2006. I thought I had left a note about it, but looking through the various page histories I cannot find one. My bad.
 * It was part of an effort to "flatten" the book. I.E. All the pages that were named "Embedded Systems/CHAPTER/PAGE" were reorganized to be simply "Embedded Systems/PAGE". You may notice that I wasnt able to figure out what to do about the various RTOS pages, so they are still "unflat". Also, this was back before I knew about history mergers, so the reorganization process was sloppy. I appologize for that also. I do want to point out that no content was lost, it was simply copy+paste moved to other pages. In this case, the page that the link points to contains the previous text of the page. If you check the logs I deleted several pages that day, and reorganized much of the book.
 * I hope this answers your question about it. Since the content still exists, I dont think we need to undelete the page. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 02:18, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

OK, thank you for reorganizing, Whiteknight.

Mike.lifeguard showed me "the last good version" of the page, a couple of paragraphs that I see have been moved to Embedded Systems/Embedded System Basics. Thank you, Mike.lifeguard! So I agree that no content has been lost, and there's no need to undelete the page.

Still, I find it odd that "floating point" gets an entire chapter in the Embedded Systems book, while "fixed point" (which I suspect is used in more embedded systems) doesn't. Although on closer look, the contents of the Embedded Systems/Floating Point Unit seem to cover both fixed point and floating point.

Now that I think about it, understanding floating point numbers requires understanding fixed-point numbers, so perhaps it is best to cover them both in one chapter rather than separate "floating point" and "fixed point" chapters. I imagine that some student familiar with programming PCs may wonder "How do I do floating point?". I expect such a student may have never heard of "fixed point", and so we'll want to tell a student searching for "floating point" how "fixed point" might be a better solution for what he's really trying to do.

Should we rename Embedded Systems/Floating Point Unit to make it more obvious that it covers both kinds of numbers? Then change Embedded Systems/Embedded System Basics/Fixed-Point Arithmetic to a redirect to that page?

--DavidCary 04:49, 30 September 2007 (UTC)


 * You're right that things dont necessarily make sense to be laid out in the precise way that they are currently. I don't think that anybody else is working actively on this book (i certainly am not, at the moment), so you are welcome to make any changes that you see fit. If you need any administrator-style help (deleting pages, merging page histories, etc) let me know. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 21:02, 30 September 2007 (UTC)