Re: units and decimal separators

["Eckhart Guthöhrlein" <eckhart.guthoehrlein@cebitec.uni-bielefeld.de>]

On Mon, May 12, 2003 at 05:57:41PM +0200, Hans Hagen wrote:
> At 23:39 11/05/2003 +0200, you wrote:
> >Sunday, May 11, 2003 Sebastian Rooks wrote:
> >
> >SR> Thank you all of you for your answers, all of them works !
> >SR> I think that I will go with \enablemathpunctuation, which seems to
> >SR> handle both the text and math cases without any added  special mark
> >SR> everywhere in the text.
> >
> >I think that setting the language should also set these kind of
> >options. Hans?
> 
> i dunno in what respect math depends on a language but it would be fun to 
> have language dependent math; before doing that some discussion is needed

As far as I have observed, the use of a comma is still preferred
in Germany as the decimal sign.
If any, a small space is used in German as a thousands seperator;
I haven't seen a point for this purpose for a long time.
This complies with international standards, see below.
Of course I have to admit that English texts don't care about
standards and use the point as a decimal sign, sometimes even
the comma as a decimal seperator - ugh! O.k., this will probably
not change.
(Hopefully we can at least get rid of gallons and inches some day.)


Excerpt from ISO 31-0
...

3.3.1

Numbers should generally be printed in roman (upright) type.

To facilitate the reading of numbers with many digits, these may
be seperated into suitable groups, preferably of three, counting
from the decimal sign towards the left and the right; the groups
should be seperated by a small space, and never by a comma or a
point, nor by any other means.

3.3.2 Decimal sign

The decimal sign is a comma on the line.

...


-- 
Eckhart