Using standardized SI prefixes

[Bastian Venthur]

On 11.06.2007 14:57 schrieb shirish:
> Hi all,
>       Please look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_prefix . I
> put a bug up for it https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/119822 &
> Aaron helpfully said it needs more discussion. I have had great
> support from libtorrent code.rasterbar.com as well as the guys at
> deluge http://dev.deluge-torrent.org .
>     The difference is simply astonishing to put aside if let's say a
> download or an .ISO says 700 MB (700*1000) it becomes 683.59375 MiB
> (700000/1024) . Please lemme know what you guys think about it ?
>     It isn't just ubuntu or debian but this needs to be done
> everywhere. Have something accurate.

Looks like we're not really moving forward with this discussion. I 
suggest that we prepare a wikipage on wiki.debian.org with a friendly 
formulated bugreport template. After this template is mature enough, we 
can start writing wishlist bugreports on packages making wrong use SI 
prefixes (e.g. write KB but mean KiB) asking them to consider to switch 
to binary prefixes instead.

The bugreport template should include:

* The problem
* A short paragraph explaining why it is a good idea to use binary
   prefixes when presenting numbers as m * 2^n and SI prefixes when
   presenting numbers as m * 10^n
* A list of a few important packages already using binary prefixes (the
   kernel, GNU coreutils, ...)
* Wikipedia link to binary prefixes article
* A link to this discussion
* A usertag?

We should not urge to use either binary prefixes or SI prefixes 
consistently in all packages! Instead we should urge to use the prefixes 
*correctly*. When 1k means 1000 Bytes, it is OK to use it -- when it 
means 1024 they, should make the switch to binary prefixes.


Any thoughts?

Cheers,


Bastian


-- 
Bastian Venthur                                      http://venthur.de
Debian Developer                                 venthur at debian org