Jonathan, The basic problem is that very few people would know what 1.3z was, whereas everyone knows what 1.3e-21. The desirability of %r drops considerably if there is a chance it could produce results that many people would not know how to read. My preference is to allow any scale factor to be used as input, but only to output the common ones. If it is important that we have a consistent set, I would definitely recommend going with the reduced set. I suspect that if you asked 100 engineers what zepto was, I bet that most one or two would know that it was 1e-21. I expect that most people would think it was a Marx Brother. -Ken Jonathan David wrote: > Why? if the number is in that range, and you are > printing with format %r, I would want it to use the > suffix/Scalefactor rather than switching to e-21 when > printing! > + we only have to change 1 paragraph in the spec, > 2.5.3!! - to split we'd have to modify TWO paragraphs! > > that's MHO.. > Jonathan > > > > --- Ken Kundert <ken@designers-guide.com> wrote: > >> Geoffrey, >> Cool! Somehow I missed that. >> >> If the list of scale factors are expanded as >> Jonathan requests, it would >> probably be best to make the two lists distinct as I >> believe very few >> people know y, z, Y, or Z. Even E and P are dubious. >> The idea being that >> the language would accept all as input but only >> output the most common ones. >> >> -Ken >> >> Geoffrey.Coram wrote: >>> Ken - >>> Your suggestion was already incorporated in LRM >> 2.2, %r or %R >>> for printing using "engineering notation, using >> the scale >>> factors defined in Section 2.5.3." >>> >>> -Geoffrey >>> >>> >>> Ken Kundert wrote: >>>> Jonathan, >>>> The complete set can be found here: >>>> http://physics.nist.gov/cuu/Units/prefixes.html >>>> >>>> Personally, I'd like to see us add a function or >> a special %code that >>>> converts numbers into strings with scale factors >> and perhaps units. I >>>> find the way verilog prints out real numbers to >> be quite difficult to read. >>>> -Ken >>> begin:vcard >> fn:Ken Kundert >> n:Kundert;Ken >> org:Designer's Guide Consulting, Inc. >> adr:;;101 First Street, #150;Los Altos;CA;94024;USA >> email;internet:ken@designers-guide.com >> tel;work:+1-650-968-8291 >> note:Public key for encrypted email: >> http://www.designers-guide.com/kens.key >> x-mozilla-html:FALSE >> url:http://www.designers-guide.com >> version:2.1 >> end:vcard >> >> > >
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