Re: [PATCH v3 1/6] man2/: use IEC or ISO multiples to clarify long numeric digit strings

[Alex Colomar <alx.manpages@gmail.com>]

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On 2/20/23 15:29, Stefan Puiu wrote:
> Hi Alex,

Hi Stefan,

>> 4 KiB is not that much better than 4096, since 4096 is easy to read.
>> For higher numbers such as 33554432, it becomes more important to use 32 KiB.
>> For consistency, using 4 KiB seems reasonable.
> 
> How about using KiB / MiB over a certain number of digits? It seems
> excessive to use them everywhere.

We might do that.  So far, I prefer having the patches change 
everything, and then we can later discuss about discarding part of them.

> 
> Also, for the record, I had no idea what KiB / MiB means and how it's
> different from KB/MB until this discussion. I googled it before
> writing this reply, and found this among the first hits:
> https://ux.stackexchange.com/a/13850.

That answer was written more than a decade ago.  These days, binary 
prefixes are more common.  In fact, I'd say most GNU/Linux commands 
respect them (an important exception being GNU coreutils (for example 
ls(1)).  But many programs use prefixes accurately, such as fdisk(8).

In the Linux man-pages we have units(7), which documents these.  Maybe 
that page should be more known.

BTW, that answer is inaccurate (at least today): drive manufacturers 
have the distinction pretty clear, and use it precisely (with lawsuits 
won thanks to this); they use metric prefixes, because they mean it. 
They can sell you 1 TB instead of 1 TiB, and most people won't even 
know, but those who know, will know that 1 TB is 1'000'000'000'000 B, 
which is what you get.  They have no incentives to sell 1 TiB drives, 
because they are visually almost the same, but there's around 9.95% more 
bytes, so it's more expensive to produce.  It's not worth it for them.

> 
> I would say making the docs easy to understand for users is more
> important than adhering to some specs users might not be familiar
> with.

Well, using MiB prompts readers to use their search engine to learn what 
that is (that's how I learnt it the first time; and that's what one does 
when reading a book and finding a new word).  I think that shouldn't be 
considered an impediment, but an opportunity to learn something new.

Once you know the difference, you appreciate the preciseness.  I hate 
when I see some software that uses the metric prefixes for meaning 
binary multipliers.  I also hate software that operates on bytes, when 
you almost always want binary multipliers but only have metric 
multipliers (hey partman, I mean you!).  I reported a bug to the Debian 
installer recently because it's very painful to partition a drive from it.

Cheers,

Alex

-- 
<http://www.alejandro-colomar.es/>
GPG key fingerprint: A9348594CE31283A826FBDD8D57633D441E25BB5


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