Yes Joe, and this is one of the main features of the format. The series were on the basis that a drawing or picture that is made on any format will fit perfectly if reduced or enlarged AND that in the same time the development of the subformats are done through halves which is associated with great savings in cutting the formats.
Once maintaining these initial conditions one gets to the sqrt2 ratio between length and width. This is in fact the reason why the length and the width of the A$ for ex. are not round cm or mm values. Bottom line is that the format is hard metric as it has been designed based on the metric system to begin with and is no soft converion of any other unit of measurement. Therefore, ISO 216 is a metric standard in every respect and on top of this it is the standard used by more than 90% of the world. We advocate metrication and one of the forte argument is that 96% of the world used this standard. However paradoxically, we declare that USMA does not advocate adopting international standards (which are used by the same %). In other words we want metrication but we don't want to use metric screws, bearings, printing media and so much more. Then why do we want metrication to begin with? (this desrves a topic on it's own!) Adrian. -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Joseph B. Reid Sent: Thursday, 25 April, 2002 15:38 To: U.S. Metric Association Subject: [USMA:19644] Re: Answer from MT editors Jim Elwell wrote in USMA 19361: . >There is absolutely nothing that makes the ISO-sized papers inherently >superior to American sizes. It is just a standard size, as American A, B, >C, D, etc. are standard sizes. Sure, it has a metric basis, but that is >totally meaningless (or unknown) to 99.9999% of all people who use it. 17/22 = 0.773 841/1.189 = 0.707 11/17 = 0.647 594/841 = 0.706 8.5/11 = 0.773 420/594 = 0.707 5.5/8.5 = 0.647 297/420 = 0.707 4,25/5.5 = 0.773 210/297 = 0.707 2.75/4.25 = 0.647 148/210 = 0.705 105/148 = 0.709 If you have a page layout that fits 5.5 by 8.5 it can't be enlarged to fit 8.5 by 11. If you have a page layout that fits 148 by 210 it can be enlarged to a perfect fit with 210 by 297. Joseph B.Reid 17 Glebe Road West Toronto M5P 1C8 Tel. 416 486-6071
