I just sent the following to [EMAIL PROTECTED] and some people on http://apparelandfootwear.org/4col.cfm?pageID=174 :
Dear Mr. Mellian, I read with great interest on http://www.ansi.org/public/news/2002july/what_my_size.html a progress report about the -- in my eyes *very* needed and desireable -- standardization of clothing labels based on real body measurements. The above text didn't say anything on ASTM's current plans on which units to prefer. I am very curious: Do you believe that there is a realistic chance that the upcoming new US clothing label standard will use exclusively centimeter dimensions? I'd appreciate your (private, inofficial) views on this, simply out of personal curiousity as a UK consumer who frequently buys US clothing and has a keen interest in standardization. I would certainly hope that your committee will specify cm-only labels. The main reasons are: - as a consumer, I find the dual labeling still found frequently on UK clothes confusing and inconvenient, as I always end up thinking of my body dimensions in *both* units and then start to mix them up - doubling the number of dimensions listed would make the label less readable (smaller fonts have to be used for the digits) - the U.S. exports significant amounts of clothing abroad and today even very metric countries are still swamped with US jeans labeled in inches only - the European Union will complete its metrication effort by requiring all products to use metric-only labels from 2009 - an inch-based label would add conversion cost for both industry and consumers when the US finally decides to fully adopt standard units of measurement, which I believe/hope can still be expected within this or early next decade - for certain dimensions (shirt neck girth or shoe length), the unit inch is clearly to much too large, whereas integer centimeter dimensions seem to offer an almost ideal resolution Best regards, Markus -- Markus G. Kuhn, Computer Laboratory, University of Cambridge, UK Email: mkuhn at acm.org, WWW: <http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/>
