-----Original Message-----
From: news [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Randomthots
Sent: Thursday, May 05, 2005 2:19 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: [users] Re: Dimensions in inches: need >2 decimal places
Johnny Andersson wrote:
I like wars, can I be a part of these ones..? ;D
Sure. Pull up a rock and have fun. :)
About paper sizes, just a question of curiosity: How does the letter
size work?
The is no real "system", just an accretion of conventions over the
years. There are several "standard" sizes used for paper, photos, and
index cards.
The A sizes are easy to understand.
That's because it was actually designed at some point. You don't
"understand" the American system; you just remember it.
A0=1 m² and height/width=SquareRoot(2)
A1=A0 cut in the middle=1/2 m², height/width=SquareRoot(2)
A2=1/4 m², still height/width=(2)
and so on...
So height(A(n))=width(A(n-1)), width(A(n))=height(A(n-1))/2.
Simple mathematics. So tell me about the Letter format.
8.5" x 11" -- Standard Letter
8.5" x 14" -- Legal Letter
5.5" x 8.5" -- Half Letter
11" x 17"
17" x 22"
As Carl said (indirectly), the metric system is more logical then the
imperial one, but the one you are used to is stil the easiest one to
handle, just because you are used to it. But you can get used to just
about everything, just if you want to. A couple of years scientists
thought that it's harder to learn when you get older but now
they found
that that is not correct. The problem seems to be that older
people are
not that willing to learn new things. We (me included, I am 39 soon)
think that we don't have to learn so much more or tired are tired of
learning, but if we find something to be very interesting and
we really
want to learn about it, we learn it very fast!
The metric system is very logical. I like it a lot. But if you live in
the States then the reality is that most of the measurements you see and
live with are in the Imperial scale, like it or not. So that's what you
become accustomed to. And more importantly, that's what you develop an
intuitive feel for. I always have to do quick "order of magnitude"
conversions in my head when talking about metric measurements. The worst
for me is Celsius vs. Fahrenheit. I just have no feel for whether or not
I need a jacket based on a Celsius temperature.
We could have, and should have, converted 30 years ago but the
government started out the endeavor by publishing all these conversion
charts to 5 decimal places. Everybody was bitching about having to do
all that math all the time. It was a mostly specious complaint but it
stopped the changeover dead in its tracks.
And yes, about the original topic, an option for more decimals? Sure,
why not? If the user only want one or two decimals, well just let him
set the number of decimals to 1 or 2. If he wants 19
decimals, why stop
him? So I would probably vote for a feature like that.
One problem with Imperial scales is that, by convention, fractional
divisions are binary rather than decimal. You talk about 1/2, 1/4, 1/8,
1/16, etc... so every division down needs another decimal place to be
accurately written. I guess in that regard Imperial is more consonant
with computer representation than metric is. Small numbers written in
binary would end up translating that way.
Anyway, if the only paper you can buy is 8 1/2 x 11 inches and you need
1" margins with 1/2" indents, etc., then working with metric is a PITA.
Those kind of mathematical conversions are what this electronic slave I
call a computer is supposed to be good for.
Say you want to create an 1/8" grid that's 8" wide and 10" long. 1/8" =
0.125. Round that to .13 and multiply by 64 = 8.32. That's over a
quarter of an inch off over the width of the page and almost a half inch
over the height of the page. I agree that you can't see 1/200", but the
cumulative effect is very noticable
Rod
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