Re: Configure.help editorial policy

Martin Mares
2001-12-27T15:10:00Z

Hello!

> If you look at my post more closely, you'll see I used `kB' (that's small
> k and capital B) for decimal kilobyte. I would never suggest using `KB'
> (that's capital K and capital B) for it. I do agree that `KB' is traditionally
> used for binary kilobytes, but what about MB, GB and so on? These _are_
> ambiguous. I am in favour of using Ki, Mi and Gi for binary quantities.

Yes, the current MB/GB units are awfully ambiguous, but using Mi/Gi won't
cure the confusion as nobody will know whether MB/GB in that text means
the old-fashioned name of binary megabyte or the decimal megabyte according
to the new standard. Yes, the confusion might die out after a long period
of time of everybody switches to the new system, but I seriously doubt
it will happen in the near future.

It seems that the only way which is going to work is to create a new decimal
prefix for units of information as well. Not a particularly nice solution,
but probable the only working one.

Have a nice fortnight
--
Martin `MJ' Mares <mj@ucw.cz> http://atrey.karlin.mff.cuni.cz/~mj/
Faculty of Math and Physics, Charles University, Prague, Czech Rep., Earth
Every program in development at MIT expands until it can read mail.