--- William Sit <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Actually, we can even do better, without the user doing a > setUnitLength(nm), if the only reason to use nm instead of > m is to get rid of annoying powers of 10. For numerical > output (the problem does not arise for symbolic output), the > output coerce routine can sense the magnitude of the value in the > unit and shift the decimal place appropriately and adjusting > using a suitable prefix. So one stays in SI but the output > gets rid of the powers of 10.
Are nanometer, etc. considered part of SI then? Nifty idea, and one worth following up on, but I would still like to peg things at nm, for the following reason/scenario: Let's say I know that my calculations and data SHOULD be coming out in the nm range. I set my unit for length to be nm, proceed, and mostly see small numbers of nm. All well and good, until suddenly I have a huge or very small number appearing. Red flag! Not close to 1 nm. With autoscaling, the number would have stayed near one and the unit would have changed. Sometimes useful, I agree, but I can see arguments for both sides here. Cheers, CY __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com _______________________________________________ Axiom-developer mailing list [email protected] http://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/axiom-developer
