Gentoo Archives: gentoo-project

From: Ruud Koolen <redlizard@g.o>
To: gentoo-project@l.g.o
Subject: Re: [gentoo-project] Call for agenda items - Council meeting 2014-04-08
Date: Tue, 01 Apr 2014 11:47:11
Message-Id: 201404011346.58141.redlizard@gentoo.org
In Reply to: Re: [gentoo-project] Call for agenda items - Council meeting 2014-04-08 by Rich Freeman
1 On Sunday 30 March 2014 16:07:49 Rich Freeman wrote:
2 > Proposal 1
3 > "Whenever practical Developers are encouraged to use SI units and base
4 > 10 values (ie 1KB = 1000 bytes). They may use base 2 values when this
5 > output is more likely to be useful to users (eg in memory hexdumps,
6 > etc). Either way, unit prefixes defined in IEC 80000-13 (KB, KiB,
7 > etc) must be used so that output is unambiguous. This does not
8 > require maintainers to patch upstream code to change its behavior, but
9 > they should be applied with code that originates in Gentoo."
10 >
11 > While I understand the resentment at the redefinition of prefixes that
12 > have been in use for decades, the ambiguity of using SI prefixes with
13 > non-SI definitions creates confusion and potentially error. I think
14 > clarity should always be valued when the change is otherwise cosmetic.
15 >
16 > So, use MiB or MB as makes sense, but the latter should be the default
17 > and should always mean 1000000 bytes.
18
19 +1
20
21 Whatever terminology we use, it had better meet the requirement that one
22 kilobyte per kilometer equals one byte per meter. And the definition of the
23 kilometer isn't going to change.