Re: Changing KB, MB, and GB to KiB, MiB, and GiB in Configure.help.

Mike Eldridge
2001-12-20T22:50:10Z

On Thu, Dec 20, 2001 at 10:14:22PM +0100, Gábor Lénárt wrote:
> On Thu, Dec 20, 2001 at 04:05:26PM -0500, Richard B. Johnson wrote:
> > One of the many bad things about changing this kind of stuff is that
> > it doesn't even follow the rules, i.e., upper case is used for proper
> > names an/or where there could be a conflict between a previously-defined
> > abbreviation such as milliampere and megampere (mA, MA). Instead, most
>
> OK, that's true, 'MA' is a nightmare even for the first sight ...
>
> > everybody uses K for kilo and it's as absolutely incorrect as possible.
> > The existing symbols work by fiat. You can't make them "correct" by
> > following incorrect rules.
>
> Oh well, sorry, so let's say about 'k' and 'm'. However an engineer friend
> of mine has just say that 'K' is 1024, and 'k' is 1000 ... I dunno anymore ...

i have seen kB instead of KB in many places. and the only place i've
ever seen kilo abbreviated as K has been with respect to binary.

> [however I've never seen 'Kg' instead of 'kg', but 'mB' or 'mb' are ugly
> when compared with 'Mb' and 'MB', not counting that 'b' is bit and 'B' is
> byte ... well ... it's confusing sometimes ...]

i was going to comment about simply using lowercase equivalents, but
then milli already has 'm', although the concept of a millibyte (or even
millibit) is absurd.

-mike

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