From: Ville Voipio <ville.voipio@kpatents.com>
Subject: Units -- a few things
Date: Fri, 20 Jan 2006 19:58:52 +0200 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <43D124DC.7080705@kpatents.com> (raw)
There seems to be a small glitch in m-units.tex. The unit \Bit typesets
"Bit". This is wrong, as bits are always in lowercase first letter:
a single bit: bit
a byte: B
It is also possible to use b (for bit) and Byte (for B). However, bits
are always small and Bytes large. The best practice seems to be to spell
bits out (bit) and use abbreviation for Bytes (B). This minimizes confusion.
I fixed this problem in my ConTeXt installation by tweaking rows 664 and
666.
For more discussion, see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byte
It might be worth it to implement the octet (o), as well. It is a good
unit (more precise and descriptive than byte) but the abbreviation is
horrible.
---
Another related thing is whether ConTeXt should implement IEC 60027-2
binary prefices (Ki, Mi, Gi, Ti). More info on this:
http://www.iec.ch/zone/si/si_bytes.htm
---
Well, then to a more practical thing... This is a very trivial question,
but still. When writing a number and the unit, it would be nice to have
automatic formatting. What I mean is that when I have a million two
hundred thousand kilograms, I would like it to be typeset:
1(small space)200(small space)000(small space)kg
Everything on a single row despite where it is. Now I write:
1\,200\,000\,\Kilo\Gram
It would be more legible, if I could just write:
\unit{1200000}{\Kilo\Gram}
Taking care of all the fancy small spaces should be computer's problem.
not mine... (Or does this mechanism already exist?)
- Ville
next reply other threads:[~2006-01-20 17:58 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 2+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2006-01-20 17:58 Ville Voipio [this message]
2006-01-20 18:59 ` Hans Hagen
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