From kde-devel Fri Jul 10 23:27:57 2009 From: Michael Pyne Date: Fri, 10 Jul 2009 23:27:57 +0000 To: kde-devel Subject: Re: How to configure konqueror to show KB and MB instead of KiB and Message-Id: <200907101927.57680.mpyne () kde ! org> X-MARC-Message: https://marc.info/?l=kde-devel&m=124726854728338 MIME-Version: 1 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="--===============0239067250==" --===============0239067250== Content-Type: multipart/signed; boundary="nextPart9684106.Y4cmdHLIiz"; protocol="application/pgp-signature"; micalg=pgp-sha1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit --nextPart9684106.Y4cmdHLIiz Content-Type: Text/Plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable On Friday 10 July 2009 12:07:37 Matthew Woehlke wrote: > You also wrote: > > It would be nice of these people to name it like a new unit instead > > of stealing a perfectly good, working unit name, in current use by > > millions around the world. > > ...and I agree. Unfortunately, the people that decided to misuse "kilo" > didn't decide to name it like a new unit and instead stole a perfectly > good, working unit name*, in current use by millions around the world. Except you're not "punishing" the perpetrators here, so please dismount the= =20 high horse. ;) > >> The people designing computers were largely mathematicians. As > >> mathematicians, they knew better than to do something as confusing as > >> that. Laziness had everything to do with it. > > > > Or maybe they felt it wasn't confusing (because it's not)? > > SI says "kiloXXX" =3D "1000 XXX". CS says "kilobyte =3D 1024 bytes". > > Nope, not confusing at all. Ian Wadham has already listed quite a few other examples of things that are= =20 *initially* confusing that end up requiring explanation but haven't been=20 changed due to their prevalence in existing practice. I would recommend=20 reading his email if you haven't already. > > ... that's my point. When people get interested they will look up KB a= nd > > see that "it means 1024 hur hur hur". > > ...or they've had high school science (in the U.S.) and "know" that > "kilo" =3D 1000. Except - surprise! - that's wrong in this case. If they had high school science they'd know that K is something completely= =20 different from k. (Kelvin versus kilo) > (In sensible countries - i.e. those not using imperial - they probably > learn SI even earlier, since it is relevant to every day life. Reminds > me of English, really. 'Always put the "i" before the "e" when the > letters occur together... except, you know, '. English is hardly the only language with a list of exceptions to its rules.= ;) > > KDE is supposed to be innovative. See Plasma, KIO, KParts, and Nepomuk. > > Why not be innovative again, and lead the way with unambiguous measures. > > [T]hat's why I haven't once proposed changing away from kibibytes by > > default. > > I'm confused. On the one hand you support KiB, but you don't think KB is > ambiguous? Sure I think it's ambiguous, that's why I've proposed unambiguous decimal=20 units. Everyone wins! :) > > My proposal for KdB was in that regard half-snarky and only a little bit > > serious. Do I mind if we have an option that makes KB =3D=3D 1000? No= , but > > I want it to be non-default and I really do think it's a better idea to > > have specific units for the same reason it was a good idea to come up > > with KiB. > > Was anyone asking for "KB =3D 1000 B" to be default? I thought we mostly > agreed KiB should stay default... (And anyway "KB =3D 1000 B" is wrong, it > should be "kB =3D 1000 B" :-) ...note lower case 'k'.) No, but people were asking that KB should never be visible unless it meant= =20 1000 bytes, which is inconsistent with existing practice and was certainly = not=20 wanted by a significant amount of people. Regards, - Michael Pyne --nextPart9684106.Y4cmdHLIiz Content-Type: application/pgp-signature; name=signature.asc Content-Description: This is a digitally signed message part. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2.0.11 (GNU/Linux) iQIcBAABCAAGBQJKV859AAoJEAuvDJx7auny+UEP+waWaQfmzFWbIIKwej91KrkO VFDvju999yjkxq87WpmtRK6ZxPhx6BL8DBoAYb4zXkdG1Ae3KAp5qewRuzi78zYF CV8ZVny8rC43m09x8ZjJOUnq4dgAsFdNS6M51HJsgYFZMjOZZujhoBoMWjGy3Wea n3f47M6LLQ+e0AfweTJ0r39ZSVX+xl+aZykdP0eYcnDoM49iUn+iO5omtw4+QRuJ V2sGngImRZ5hjj+V1BDt3XtP5jrTI1xdhRQwHquVimw4ZBOZ7Op4fnH+8Z5kg5nc 6M5rr1aWVOYp0rdZYy5FlWNMvLCSvUNXWdNb/xnF1nAwEiGVgZ5Sc+HeKZ984JbS wq0fxl2pTSXBUzNe9D+2/ykxjQYD+jPDc/TQxNR1CEix7nglupsnAtb+T6s2Vfb7 JQLP/4pPkLjxT5SXG9AGGbSwOLCRiL/x3VXsOL1LFt6rAUQnSk4uX/1gBT0AgXye y1fgtOYUStutmqOHtlWltaRYCQEdVdCr2d3EvEOstSWPq/XNzeuwZ9gRvNHpWCCR fchtuZ1ppW/Wh5Ibwq98P3NfjbQJX080DX9t6Z8IKnrMt1VWMXJ0WY4PIsCk2o5O 8E/tAt6iDE68CQ2IS5QI5xiZp8bBp/3D7Zpdk83zZdweRalDzMi7f83zVLqifqT0 6TZmUp8ZNV6sI3yJKCA6 =atfW -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --nextPart9684106.Y4cmdHLIiz-- --===============0239067250== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline >> Visit http://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/kde-devel#unsub to unsubscribe << --===============0239067250==--