One of the great things I like about rails is not always being tied to full 
backwards compatibility causing a more and more bloated core every major 
release.  In my mind a plugin that puts everything back would solve that 
issue, for those who need it.

That other objection still gives me pause though... I suspect the 
difference between IEC and SI units is still not commonly known even among 
programmers.  So this may not be the right time to do this yet?  I dunno, 
just my thoughts, I'd be happy either way.

Just to be clear, this is not just a visual change in prefix, but much a 
more basic functional mathematical change of how the units are calculated 
and converted too.  A mere prefix would be superficial in comparison.

Dave


On Tuesday, October 2, 2012 10:30:30 AM UTC-7, Allen Madsen wrote:
>
> This pull request poses two problems in my mind. The changes are not 
> backwards compatible, which could lead to some serious head scratching. 
> Secondly, even though they're a standard now, they're not commonly used, 
> which leads to more head scrathing.
>
> Allen Madsen
> http://www.allenmadsen.com
>
>
> On Tue, Oct 2, 2012 at 11:52 AM, Andrés Mejía <[email protected]<javascript:>
> > wrote:
>
>> I'm -1 for this.
>>
>>
>> On Tue, Oct 2, 2012 at 4:53 AM, Jarl Friis <[email protected]<javascript:>
>> > wrote:
>>
>>> One of the greatest things about rails is that it is so 
>>> standards-compliant,
>>> no other framework that I have seen have complied to the
>>> HTTP standard (think REST) in such a degree that Rails does. Kudos to
>>> you all for that.
>>>
>>> I think we (Rails community) should follow the line of standards
>>> compliance and also
>>> take it to the binary prefixes [1], i.e. kilobytes, megabytes,
>>> etc. For more than half a decade SI units has been a standard
>>> (occupying the prefixes kilo, mega, ...) Since the introduction of
>>> computers the prefixes has been misused in the IT industry for powers
>>> of 1024 but used correctly (for marketing reasons) by storage
>>> manufacturers to mean powers of 1000.
>>>
>>> In 1999 IEC published the new standard for powers of 1024 (known as
>>> binary prefixes[1]). In 2008 this was harmonized with ISO standard in
>>> ISO/IEC IEC 80000-13:2008
>>>
>>> I think it is a good time (for Rails 4) for Rails to conform to these
>>> standards. That means that every time a power of 1024 is used the IEC
>>> prefixes kibi, mebi, and so on are used and vice versa. Further every
>>> time a power of 1000 is used the SI prefixes are used, that is, kilo,
>>> mega, and so on and vice versa.
>>>
>>> I have created a pull request
>>> (https://github.com/rails/rails/pull/7819) that implements two things
>>> (in two separate commits):
>>>
>>> 1) Rename all use of 1024 to use IEC prefix names
>>>
>>>    a) Rename of core extension: 2.kilobytes => 2.kibibyte  == 2*1024
>>>    b) Rename all use of these helpers within the Rails project.
>>>    c) Ensure that number the prefixes are KiB, MiB when dividing by
>>>    powers of 1024, and using KB, MB when dividing by powers of 1000
>>>    (that is when options[:prefix] => :si)
>>>
>>> 2) (Re)Introduced the posibility to use SI prefix names (meaning powers 
>>> of 1000)
>>>    Introduced SI prefix helpers 2.kilobytes == 2*1000
>>>
>>> Impact on Rails itself:
>>> None: All the useages has been renamed to use the semantically
>>> equivalent method (that is IEC names).
>>>
>>> Impact on Rails projects:
>>> The use of core extensions 2.kilobytes, 2.megabytes will mean
>>> something else; A power of 1000 in Rails4 as opposed to a power of
>>> 1024 in Rails3. But the old behaviour can still be achieved by using
>>> IEC names instead such as 2.kibibytes or 2.mebibytes.
>>>
>>> Footnotes:
>>> [1]  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_prefix
>>>
>>>
>>> Jarl
>>>
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