On 2/20/23 09:35, Alex Colomar wrote: > On 2/20/23 15:29, Stefan Puiu wrote: >> Hi Alex, > > Hi Stefan, > >>> 4 KiB is not that much better than 4096, since 4096 is easy to read. >>> For higher numbers such as 33554432, it becomes more important to use 32 >>> KiB. >>> For consistency, using 4 KiB seems reasonable. >> >> How about using KiB / MiB over a certain number of digits? It seems >> excessive to use them everywhere. > > We might do that. So far, I prefer having the patches change > everything, and then we can later discuss about discarding part of them.
If you're going to tell people to learn something new: 1<<10 is a kilobyte, 1<<20 is a megabyte, 1<<30 is a gigabyte, and so on. I've sometimes used 16*(1<<30) for clarity. >> Also, for the record, I had no idea what KiB / MiB means and how it's >> different from KB/MB until this discussion. Very few people do. Some people have been trying to make "fetch" happen for many years, but it didn't. (Part of the reason is kibybyte/mebibyte/gibibyte are minor tongue twisters, they're physically harder to say, so nobody does.) >> I googled it before >> writing this reply, and found this among the first hits: >> https://ux.stackexchange.com/a/13850. > > That answer was written more than a decade ago. These days, binary > prefixes are more common. In fact, I'd say most GNU/Linux commands "First off, I'd suggest printing out a copy of the GNU coding standards, and NOT read it. Burn them, it's a great symbolic gesture." - Linus Torvalds (Still there in Documentation/process/coding-style.rst.) GNU has nothing to do with Linux, and never did. Stallman has a history of taking credit for other people's work: https://functional.cafe/@tfb/109897415359142549 > respect them (an important exception being GNU coreutils (for example > ls(1)). But many programs use prefixes accurately, such as fdisk(8). > > In the Linux man-pages we have units(7), which documents these. Maybe > that page should be more known. FYI Michael Kerrisk last updated https://github.com/mkerrisk in 2021. It is now 2023. He still posts monthly proof-of-life to https://twitter.com/mkerrisk/with_replies but hasn't replied to man-pages email in the past year that I am aware of? Dunno why. I emailed to ask, but... > BTW, that answer is inaccurate (at least today): drive manufacturers > have the distinction pretty clear, and use it precisely (with lawsuits > won thanks to this); they use metric prefixes, because they mean it. > They can sell you 1 TB instead of 1 TiB, and most people won't even > know, but those who know, will know that 1 TB is 1'000'000'000'000 B, > which is what you get. Remember when the dictionaries gave in on "literally" meaning "an emphatic form of figuratively"? What's the "kibybyte" equivalent we all switched to there for clarity? We say "metric ton" and "imperial ton". We say "degrees farenheit" and "degrees celsius". The celsius people didn't come up with a different word for degree, yet somehow we all survived... > They have no incentives to sell 1 TiB drives, > because they are visually almost the same, but there's around 9.95% more > bytes, so it's more expensive to produce. It's not worth it for them. "No, a _bud_ lite..." >> I would say making the docs easy to understand for users is more >> important than adhering to some specs users might not be familiar >> with. > > Well, using MiB prompts readers to use their search engine to learn what > that is (that's how I learnt it the first time; and that's what one does > when reading a book and finding a new word). "They'll google it" is the modern version of "they'll read the documentation". They will not, you're just delegating blame. Rob P.S. Maybe this is a generational thing? Are the kids saying "kibibyte" in high school these days? I know that "hacker means computer breakin specialist" is something a small number of boomers will resist to the death despite a google news search only pulling up one meaning in general usage. And the "two spaces after period" thing old hands cling to will only end when they die despite the chicago manual of style, the AP stylebook, the MLA handbook, and the APA publication manual all agreeing its' been one space after a period for decades now. But maybe "kibibyte" is more than a shibboleth to somebody somewhere...
