Using standardized SI prefixes

[David Verhasselt]

Ben Finney wrote:
> David Verhasselt <davidv at telenet.be> writes:
>
>   
>> Perhaps transforming it into a localization problem would do the
>> trick.  This way, users would be able to set their preference on
>> byte-count in the same place as their preference on currency,
>> decimal, and am/pm vs 24h. Applications could make use of the
>> localization settings to calculate the amount of bytes, which would
>> hopefully eventually centralize and generalize what counting-method
>> the user sees.
>>     
>
> A GiB is the same in any locale, and has the same display -- "GiB" --
> in any locale. Displaying it another way is misleading.
>
>   
Yes, but the fact is that there are apparently a lot of different 
opinions on what should be used. Therefore why not agree to disagree, 
and let the user decide what they want to use. Make a centralized system 
that converts an arbitrary byte-count to the user's preferred way of 
viewing it. That's where I got the locale analogy from. I know, it's 
probably overkill to create a whole new API for just this, but perhaps 
there is an API where you could add a simple function that does this to. 
Maybe in GTK?

Either way, a centralized system would help stop errorenous usage of 
GiB, GB or Gb.