[Date Prev] | [Thread Prev] | [Thread Next] | [Date Next] -- [Date Index] | [Thread Index] | [List Home]
Subject: CONVERT - some authoritative sources
CONVERT is tricky because it covers so many different units, defined in so many documents. FYI, for those looking at CONVERT, here are some relevant documents. In particular, "The Unified Code for Units of Measure" is VERY interesting; I'm looking at what it would take to be more conformant to it. --- David A. Wheeler ================= The CONVERT draft I just uploaded has URLs for the BIPM document - the official SI definition - as well as some U.S. NIST documents that are very helpful. One _especially_ interesting document is "The Unified Code for Units of Measure" by Gunther Schadow and Clement J. McDonald, Regenstrief Institute for Health Care and Indiana University School of Medicine. http://aurora.rg.iupui.edu/~schadow/units/UCUM/ucum.html The official standards for measurements unfortunately have a number of conflicts, e.g., "B" is both Bel (measurement of sound, as in deciBel) and Byte, while "b" is both "barn" and "bit".... and they use characters (like mu) not available everywhere. This document defines a set of _unique ASCII representations_ for each unit. EXACTLY what we want. I'm going to study this one in more depth, but I think this is going to nicely resolve some issues, and what's better, it's a nice, citable, reusable document. I'm going to see what it'd take to be more consistent with this document; at first glance we're 90% there already, and much of the rest looks easy. In many cases gaining consistency with this also gives us better consistency with worldwide official standards, and where there are variances they give nice explanations as to WHY that is so. NIST Handbook 44, 2006 edition http://ts.nist.gov/WeightsAndMeasures/h44-06.cfm esp Appendix C: http://ts.nist.gov/WeightsAndMeasures/upload/AppendC-06-HB44-Final.pdf Statutory Instrument 1995 No. 1804 The Units of Measurement Regulations 1995 http://www.opsi.gov.uk/si/si1995/Uksi_19951804_en_2.htm Good for Imperial units. --- David A. Wheeler
[Date Prev] | [Thread Prev] | [Thread Next] | [Date Next] -- [Date Index] | [Thread Index] | [List Home]