On Tuesday 12 June 2007 08:54, Miles Bader wrote:
> Now that a bunch of people are all in a misguided frenzy to "correct"
> things (which weren't broken), there will almost certainly be cases
> where some silly fool will change the _calculation_ but not the label
> (e.g., in a case where space is at a premium) -- e.g., they'll keep "K",
> but change the calculation to "/ 1000", because that's "correct".
>
> However it's _guaranteed_ that many apps will stick with "/ 1024".
THe right way to do it, I believe, is to start out by changing the prefixes
from k/M/G/etc. to Ki/Mi/Gi/etc. _where these units are used today_. Whenever
you see a number followed by KiB, MiB etc., you can be certain of what it
means. No confusion is possible. When you see a number followed by kB, MB
etc., it can still have two meanings, just like today. However, until the IEC
prefixes become commonplace, the SI prefixes shouldn't suddenly be used to
denote powers of two where they previously denoted powers of ten (as in your
example), unless the same piece of software also makes prominent use of IEC
prefixes (in which case you can be pretty sure that if it *says* kB, they it
*means* kB) and/or clearly documents the change (e.g. in a legend).
So, just because some developers *might* do things wrong, that doesn't mean it
will surely happen.
--
Magnus Holmgren holmgren@lysator.liu.se
(No Cc of list mail needed, thanks)
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