Use meta_data field to covey an asset's characteristic

[dstadulis]

Background

Using integers in applications which require uncompromising accuracy (Money, accounting, settlement etc) is common in order to handle the onerous computer hardware and software demands to perform accurate operations on floating point numbers. IEEE 754 is a standards example of the attempts to create uniformity in how to implement computation on floats.
Financial accounting software often uses integers to achieve accuracy without subjecting itself to FP arithmetic complexity.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_754
https://husobee.github.io/money/float/2016/09/23/never-use-floats-for-currency.html

tapd uses integers to ensure that it's precision and accuracy is high. Bitcoin similarly uses integers for internal account and COIN = 100000000 used to convert/present the decimal in the UI.

Such a variable merely instructs UIs on where to place the decimal point and referred to as a characteristic. [1]

User / Market Needs

As a application developer I want an programmatic, authenticated method to produce an asset's characteristic in order to make the presentation of tapd's internally-accounted integers be displayed in UIs without needing bespoke code
As an Asset Issuer I want to convey where the decimal place should be displayed to users in order to prevent confusion and calculation errors in handling amounts

Resources

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Characteristic_(exponent_notation)#Mantissa_and_characteristic
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Significand

[RajGoodF]

Should we standardize this meta key, because as this is meta field every node/wallet/ui can interpret as per there requirements, so we should not allow this and create a standard protocol/rule which all nodes inherit while they sync asset and way they interpret this rule stays intact forever irrespective of node/ui.

[Roasbeef]

Yeah we should, can you see #925? We're working on some of the design here and would like feedback.