Re: KB or kB
Ian Abbott [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: I'd suggest either leaving them alone or adopting the IEC standards that Henrik referred to, i.e. KiB = kibibyte = 2^10 bytes Ugh! Never! Let them keep their kibibytes to themselves. :-)
Re: KB or kB
At 02:54 AM 2/8/2002, Hrvoje Niksic wrote: Wget currently uses KB as abbreviation for kilobyte. In a Debian bug report someone suggested that kB should be used because it is more correct. The reporter however failed to cite the reference for this, and a search of the web has proven inconclusive. Well, certainly among physicists, the k for kilo = x1000 is lower case. Consult any style manual for writing articles in scholarly physics journals. Of course, computer folks do as they please. g Fred Holmes
Re: KB or kB
At 03:09 AM 2/8/2002, Adrian Aichner wrote: I've seen common practice where multipliers greater unity (K, M, G, T) are uppercase, smaller unitiy (m, u, n, p, a) are lower case. I believe that in physics journals, k is used for kilo to distinguish it from K that is used for temperature degrees Kelvin (Celsius degrees above absolute zero). (That's the case, I just don't know if that's the reason.) The degree symbol is (was) generally used in typeset stuff, but the convention was developed in the days of the typewriter. But k is definitely used for kilo among physicists -- unless there has been some recent revisionism. I'm not totally up to date in this stuff. Fred Holmes
Re: KB or kB
On 08/02/2002 08:30:59 Henrik van Ginhoven wrote: On Fri, Feb 08, 2002 at 08:54:06AM +0100, Hrvoje Niksic wrote: Wget currently uses KB as abbreviation for kilobyte. In a Debian bug report someone suggested that kB should be used because it is more correct. This is the kind of stuff that leads to month-long flamewars :-) kB rather than KB? I think whoever filed that bugreport got it wrong, as far as I know kB would always mean 1000 (bytes), since k = thousand, and never ever 1024. If he'd said KiB I'd agree with him to a certain degree, but kB simply can't be right. Note that we can claim the distinction that k=1000 and K=1024 That won't work with 1E6 vs 2**20 because SI uses uppercase M for 1E6. Rather than me trying to sum it up and risk typing something wrong, this page seems to address the issue well: http://www.romulus2.com/articles/guides/misc/bitsbytes.shtml Please, no kibibytes :-) Maybe wget should just count 512-byte blocks, a la df. That would improve the understandability of the display ... NOT But it would keep the terminally anal-retentives at bay :-) Seriously, just ignore it. I can certainly live with 5% experimental error ( 2**20 = 1.0486E6 ) at megabyte level. -- Csaba Ráduly, Software Engineer Sophos Anti-Virus email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]http://www.sophos.com US Support: +1 888 SOPHOS 9 UK Support: +44 1235 559933
Re: KB or kB
On 2002-02-08 08:54 +0100, Hrvoje Niksic wrote: Wget currently uses KB as abbreviation for kilobyte. In a Debian bug report someone suggested that kB should be used because it is more correct. The reporter however failed to cite the reference for this, and a search of the web has proven inconclusive. Does someone understand the spelling issues involved enough to point out the correct spelling and back it up with arguments? The applicable standard is the SI (Système International) established by the CGPM (Conférence Générale des Poids et Mesures). It defines the metric system units (s, m, V, g, etc.) and the following prefixes for multiples and submultiples : yocto y 10**-24 zepto z 10**-21 atto a 10**-18 femto f 10**-15 pico p 10**-12 nano n 10**-9 micro µ 10**-6 milli m 10**-3 centi c 10**-2 deci d 10**-1 deca da 10**1 hecto h 10**2 kilo k 10**3 mega M 10**6 giga G 10**9 tera T 10**12 peta P 10**15 exaE 10**18 zetta Z 10**21 yotta Y 10**24 Capital K is not a prefix, it's the SI abbreviation for the temperature unit, the kelvin (note : lower case k) named after Lord Kelvin. So it's definitely kB for kilobyte. Whether that means 1000 bytes or 1024 bytes is another issue. Regardless, KB is incorrect. As are mb, mB, gb and gB, by the way. -- André Majorel [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.teaser.fr/~amajorel/
Re: KB or kB
On 8 Feb 2002 at 4:26, Fred Holmes wrote: At 02:54 AM 2/8/2002, Hrvoje Niksic wrote: Wget currently uses KB as abbreviation for kilobyte. In a Debian bug report someone suggested that kB should be used because it is more correct. The reporter however failed to cite the reference for this, and a search of the web has proven inconclusive. Well, certainly among physicists, the k for kilo = x1000 is lower case. Consult any style manual for writing articles in scholarly physics journals. Of course, computer folks do as they please. g Not just amongst physicists, k is the standard prefix for kilo, at least when kilo means 10^3 (=1000). Think km = kilometer (or kilometre), kg = kilogram (or kilogramme), etc. This does not really apply to computer usage where typically kilo has been overloaded to mean 2^10 (=1024) because it happens to be close enough to its more correct meaning. That's why K is often used to mean 2^10 to avoid confusion with k. (But as has been pointed out, this confusion persists for M, G, T, etc.) I'd suggest either leaving them alone or adopting the IEC standards that Henrik referred to, i.e. KiB = kibibyte = 2^10 bytes, MiB = mebibyte = 2^20 bytes, etc. Of course, that would likely produce asserts in progress.c ;-)
Re: KB or kB
On 08/02/2002 13:58:55 Andre Majorel wrote: On 2002-02-08 08:54 +0100, Hrvoje Niksic wrote: Wget currently uses KB as abbreviation for kilobyte. In a Debian bug report someone suggested that kB should be used because it is more correct. The reporter however failed to cite the reference for this, and a search of the web has proven inconclusive. Does someone understand the spelling issues involved enough to point out the correct spelling and back it up with arguments? The applicable standard is the SI (Système International) [snip SI prefixes] Capital K is not a prefix, it's the SI abbreviation for the temperature unit, the kelvin (note : lower case k) named after Lord Kelvin. So it's definitely kB for kilobyte. As long as it means 1000 and NOT 1024 Whether that means 1000 bytes or 1024 bytes is another issue. Not while claiming to conform to SI. Csaba -- Csaba Ráduly, Software Engineer Sophos Anti-Virus email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]http://www.sophos.com US Support: +1 888 SOPHOS 9 UK Support: +44 1235 559933
