Re: [office-formula] CONVERT - big issues, and let's add the tons!

["David A. Wheeler" <dwheeler@dwheeler.com>]

Eike:
> Gee.. are we through with this now?

You know, I think we ARE pretty much done.  Boy that was painful :-).

I want to get the UnitsML chair's review after we make these changes, and he may have some comments we'll want to act on.  But I think we've mostly spiralled to consensus.

Eike:
> I think the less we define optional / not required the more
> interoperability we achieve. So from that POV we should require units
> that have a clear and unique definition and were used before or found be
> worth to be added, or are squares/cubics of lengths.
> So as long as no one objects I'd not add a new not/required column to
> the table.

Okay, that's where I ended up too.


> > > "hundredweight shipping".
> > Ugh. All right, we can add them.  Should we use "cwt" (100 lb) and "uk_cwt" (112lb), which would continue the original convention of "uk_" for Imperial measures?
> 
> If we want to use "uk_" for all those to be differentiated, I'm fine.
> I don't know much about the U.S. customary units vs. Imperial units
> usage,

Trust me, you're blessed.  Both are rediculously complicated.  Just when you think you're done, another corner case and obscure oddity shows up.

> just thought that "long hundredweight" 'lcwt' and "long ton"
> 'lton' might be common.

They are, and we could have aliases for them.  But having SOME naming convention is a good idea, it makes it easier for users who don't read the manuals (namely, nearly all of them :-) ).

Okay, sounds like we're adding "cwt" and "uk_cwt"/"lcwt".

> So that would be 'uk_qt' quarter, 'uk_cwt'
> hundredweight and 'uk_ton' for the Avoirdupois system then?

It'd be "uk_..." for the Imperial units.   I'll check to make sure we have the major Imperial units (gallon and quart) too, I KNOW we have uk_pt for Imperial pint.

Oh, and a nit: both the U.S. customary _AND_ the Imperial system use Avoirdupois pounds by default.   It's the number of pounds in the larger mass measures that differ (!).

> Arghl. From the Wikipedia page I thought that the definition of an
> "Gunter's chain" (66 ft (survey it seems)) _is_ accepted and it would be
> equal to a "surveyor's chain". If it's not, let's drop it. I'm not
> interested into adding yet more of that nonsense.

Let's drop it.  That's really specialized stuff.  Applications can add their own units if they want to; I think we've got a list long enough for its purpose (to handle relatively common cases).

--- David A. Wheeler