On Wed, 24 Apr 2002 19:12:18 James Frysinger wrote: ... I suggest that Adrian has confused "metric" with >"rational". > Since the actual area of the sheet of paper is of minimal significance, one >is just as good as the other, in my opinion. For the nitpickers, > neither (279 mm)(216 mm) > nor (297 mm)(210 mm) >equates to 0.0625 m2 exactly. In fact the former comes closer to a nice >rational area, namely 0.60 m2. I would prefer telling people that this makes >a nice rule of thumb than I would flaunting the latter as "one-eigth of a >square meter".
Hmm... I guess the question that should be asked here is: what's important in conveying the message? The area or the dimensions of the paper or something else? That, IMHO, is what should dictate what kind of *emphasis* should be given. If area is of the essence (and I'm not saying it is, BTW), then, I'm sorry, but 'one-eighth of a square meter' it is! Never some xxx.xx sq.in. crap! > Keep in mind, too, that the commercial specifications on paper >sizes are not always very tight. > But this is irrelevant as far as telling the dimensions is concerned. I.e. industrial tolerances have nothing to do with whether dimensions should be reported in mm or in. Unless such tolerances must be part of the report itself. ... >Telling Americans that they >have to change out their filing cabinets and collections of notebooks or put >up with ill-fitting contents would be a good way to sabotage our cause. No >thanks, Adrian. >... Finally, the above is quite an interesting aspect which many may overlook in this discussion. True, we don't necessarily have to tell Americans that they'd have to all of a sudden 'change their filing cabinets', etc. Where it's important to continue producing products that would fit current hardware, fine, keep producing them. **However**, when it comes to producing new ones, be forewarned that from then on, products would be made to metric specs (not necessarily in accordance with *one* particular standard)! ;-) Marcus Is your boss reading your email? ....Probably Keep your messages private by using Lycos Mail. Sign up today at http://mail.lycos.com
