Jim McCracken wrote: >Thank you for the links to several federal agency statements >concerning the placement of SI units in documents.
There are more. I only gave some examples to stimulate the debate. >We would expect that when the proposed FPLA update is completed >that the convention used will cite the SI before the inch-pound. Good. That was what I was hoping to read. I hope this is not controversial and will be accepted easily. >The FPLA will still allow either to be listed first. I fully understand. I was not challenging this. I now have further comments: 1. Hard metric. The current mandatory font heights are soft conversions to: 1.5, 3.1, 4.7, 6.35 and 12.7. Incidentally UK equivalents are 2, 3, 4 and 6 mm (no equivalent of 12.7). With a bit of liberalisation, the minimums could be hard metric values such as 1.5, 3, 4, 6 and 12 mm. 2. No conversions in the body of the text unless relevant. This would simplify the text and remove legal ambiguity. There is a conversion table in the document for those who cannot convert between inches and mm. 3. Less mixing of prefixes. The current FPLA mixes both measurement systems and prefixes (cm2 and dm2). [begin quote] (3) Not less than 3/16 inch (4.7 mm) in height on packages the principal display panel of which has an area of more than 25 (161 cm2) but not more than 100 square inches (6.45 dm2). [end quote] Thus we would get: "Not less than 4 mm in height on packages the principal display panel of which has an area of more than xxx cm2 but not more than yyy cm2."
