On 2002-05-02 13:49-0400 Henry Spencer wrote: > On Thu, 2 May 2002, Pablo Saratxaga wrote: > > > ...Paper size is basically arbitrary... > > > > The size, yes, but the ratio between the different sizes is not. It > > is a *very* nice feature, I use it all the time to print two pages > > into a single paper sheet, and then saving in paper costs. > > [...] With modern printing and copying technology, where you can do a > 64.7% reduction as easily as any other, the advantage from having the > paper size in exactly the right ratio is slight. Not zero, but not > very important in practice.
Back in the Slackware days i used mpage(1) to get four pages on one A4 page -- perfect reading size. How would the letter/legal/whatever look like in that case? Besides, it's not only about earning millimeters here and there at the paper, but it also eliminates a troublesome converting stage. ISO�216 is based on the metric system like 1m� = A0. Much simpler and cleaner. I prefer decimal numbers. No fractions wanted. Especially in the computer age things like that could make a big difference. We have the UTF-8 example. Why the heck doesn't every one make a clean, sharp cut and do the conversion fast and painful -- but after that it's over. The mess with hundreds of charsets which results in corrupted data. I'd done it years ago hadn't it been for all the complaints from people with archaic mailreaders. > > As PA4 doesn't have the nice property of the geometric relationship > > between paper sizes there is no chance at all any country currently > > using A4 will switch to it. > > That does make a very convenient excuse for insisting that the other > guys incur all the pain of conversion. Unfortunately, this does *not* > help in selling the idea, which was exactly my point. Well, why downgrade? Mvh �yvind +-------------------------------------------------------------------+ | OpenPGP: 0x629022EB 2002-02-24 �yvind A. Holm <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> | | Fingerprint: DBE9 8D44 67F7 42AC 2CA1 7651 724E 9D53 6290 22EB | +-------- Don't support organized crime, boycott Microsoft. --------+ -- Linux-UTF8: i18n of Linux on all levels Archive: http://mail.nl.linux.org/linux-utf8/
