5 ms·

Here in ex-USSR we have those problems too. Why not standardize decimal separators altogether worldwide? We're not dealing with feeking paper handwriting! If a

Here in ex-USSR we have those problems too. Why not standardize decimal separators altogether worldwide? We're not dealing with feeking paper handwriting! If a number is printed on a computer display, it must look like 123456.78, not like "123 456,78"! Same goes for datetime representation. This localization BS has spawned an entire race of nonsense, where, for example, CSV files are not actually CSV in some regions, because their values are not COMMA-separated (as the name implies), but semicolon-separated. And we, programmers, have to deal with it somehow, not to mention some obsolete Faildows encodings like CP1251 still widely used here in lots of tech-slowpoke organizations. So: one encoding, one datetime format, one numeric format for the world and for the win. Heil UTF-8!

pilif 11y ago
>not to mention some obsolete Faildows encodings like CP1251 still widely used here in lots of tech-slowpoke organizations. as we're talking encodings: The worst file I ever had to deal with combined, within one file, UTF-8, cp437 and cp850. I guess they had DOS and Unix machines bot no Windows boxes touching that file. This is a problem that won't go away. Many developers are not aware of how character encoding, let alone Unicode, actually works and, what's the worst about this mess, many times, they can get away without knowing.
spiralpolitik 11y ago
Given that the world hasn't yet agreed on if a line ends by carriage return or carriage return-line feed I would not hold out much hope on this front (although with the death of just line feed some progress on this front as been made). See also paper sizes and electrical power outlets.
- wtbob 11y ago
  > Given that the world hasn't yet agreed on if a line ends by carriage return or carriage return-line feed I would not hold out much hope on this front (although with the death of just line feed some progress on this front as been made). Your point's correct, but linefeed hasn't died: it's still the line-ending on Unixes. Old Macs used carriage return; Windows use carriage return line feed; Unix uses linefeed. I don't know what Mac OS X uses, because I stopped using Macs before it came out.
- plugnburn 11y ago
  I also don't get why are you still using those miles and pounds when the rest of the world agreed on kilometres and kilograms.
  - kazinator 11y ago
    I live in Canada. Before that I grew up in a metric country. Though Canada is metric, I use imperial measures here and there. I use miles for the sport of running. This is because 1609 meters is close to 1600. Four laps around a standard 400 meter track is about a mile and everything follows from that. All my training is based on miles. I think of paces per mile. If I'm traveling abroad and some hotel treadmill is in kilometers and km/h, it annoys the heck out of me. However, paradoxically, road signs and car speedometers in miles and miles/hour also annoy the heck out of me; though at least since I use miles for running, at least I'm no stranger to the damn things. For laying out circuit boards, I use mils, which are thousandths of an inch: they are a subdivision which gives a metric air to an imperial measure. This is not just personal choice: they are a standard in the electronics industry. The pins of a DIP (the old-school large one) are spaced exactly 100 mils (0.1") apart, and the rows are 300 mils apart. So you generally want a grid in mil divisions. (The finer-grained DIPs are 0.05" -- 50 mils.). There is something nice about a mil in that when you're working with small things on that scale, it's just about right. A millimeter is huge. The metric system has no nice unit which corresponds to one mil. A micron is quite small: it's 25.4 mils. (How about ten of them and calling it a decamicron? Ha.) Inches themselves are also a nice size, so I tend to use them for measuring household things: widths of cabinets and shelves and the like. Last time I designed a closet shelf, I used Sketchup and everything in inches. Centimeters are too small. Common objects that have two-digit inch measurements blow up to three digits in centimeters. Centimeters don't have a good, concise way to express the precision of a measurement (other than the ridiculous formality of adding a +/- tolerance). In inches, I can quote something as being 8 1/16 inch long. This tells us not only the absolute length, but also the granularity: the fact that I didn't say 8 2/32 or 8 4/64 tells you something: that I care only about sixteeth precision. The 8 1/16 measurement is probably an approximation of something that lies between 8 1/32 and 8 3/32, expressed concisely. In centimeters, a measurement like 29 cm may be somewhat crude. But 29.3 cm might be ridiculously precise. It makes 29.4 look wrong, even though it may the case that anything in the 29.1-29.5 range is acceptable. The 10X jump in scale between centimeters and millimeters is just too darn large. The binary divisions in the imperial system give you 3.3 geometric steps inside one order of magnitude, which is useful. For a particular project, you can chose that it's going to be snapped to a 1/4" grid, or 1/8" or 1/16" based on the required precision. So for these reasons, I have gravitated toward inches, even though I was raised metric, and came to a country that turned metric before I got here. (And of course, the easy availability of rulers and tape measures marked in inches, plus support in software applications, and the enduring use of these measures in trade: e.g. you can go to a hardware store in Canada and find 3/4" wood.)
philh 11y ago
> If a number is printed on a computer display, it must look like 123456.78, not like "123 456,78"! Humans find thousands separators useful. You're asking humans to give up useful things because they're hard to program. That said, I idly wonder whether they could be implemented with font kerning. The bytes could be 123456.78, but the font could render it with extra space, as 123 456.78. I don't know if it's possible with current font technology, and there are probably all sorts of problems with it even if it is, but it might be vaguely useful.
- kazinator 11y ago
  Humans should agree on the decimal and separator symbols, the same way that they agreed on the Indo-Arabic numerals, and symbols like + (plus) and - (minus).
  - uf 11y ago
    Like we all agreed to the metric system already?
- plugnburn 11y ago
  I don't get neither how thousands separator is useful, nor what a "genius" came up with an idea to make comma a decimal separator in computers. I have nothing against either of these things in handwriting (though I personally never separate thousands), but in computing?.. I agree though that this can (and should) be solved at font-rendering level, not at an application level.

pilif 11y ago

>not to mention some obsolete Faildows encodings like CP1251 still widely used here in lots of tech-slowpoke organizations. as we're talking encodings: The worst file I ever had to deal with combined, within one file, UTF-8, cp437 and cp850. I guess they had DOS and Unix machines bot no Windows boxes touching that file. This is a problem that won't go away. Many developers are not aware of how character encoding, let alone Unicode, actually works and, what's the worst about this mess, many times, they can get away without knowing.

spiralpolitik 11y ago

Given that the world hasn't yet agreed on if a line ends by carriage return or carriage return-line feed I would not hold out much hope on this front (although with the death of just line feed some progress on this front as been made). See also paper sizes and electrical power outlets.

wtbob 11y ago
> Given that the world hasn't yet agreed on if a line ends by carriage return or carriage return-line feed I would not hold out much hope on this front (although with the death of just line feed some progress on this front as been made). Your point's correct, but linefeed hasn't died: it's still the line-ending on Unixes. Old Macs used carriage return; Windows use carriage return line feed; Unix uses linefeed. I don't know what Mac OS X uses, because I stopped using Macs before it came out.
plugnburn 11y ago
I also don't get why are you still using those miles and pounds when the rest of the world agreed on kilometres and kilograms.
- kazinator 11y ago
  I live in Canada. Before that I grew up in a metric country. Though Canada is metric, I use imperial measures here and there. I use miles for the sport of running. This is because 1609 meters is close to 1600. Four laps around a standard 400 meter track is about a mile and everything follows from that. All my training is based on miles. I think of paces per mile. If I'm traveling abroad and some hotel treadmill is in kilometers and km/h, it annoys the heck out of me. However, paradoxically, road signs and car speedometers in miles and miles/hour also annoy the heck out of me; though at least since I use miles for running, at least I'm no stranger to the damn things. For laying out circuit boards, I use mils, which are thousandths of an inch: they are a subdivision which gives a metric air to an imperial measure. This is not just personal choice: they are a standard in the electronics industry. The pins of a DIP (the old-school large one) are spaced exactly 100 mils (0.1") apart, and the rows are 300 mils apart. So you generally want a grid in mil divisions. (The finer-grained DIPs are 0.05" -- 50 mils.). There is something nice about a mil in that when you're working with small things on that scale, it's just about right. A millimeter is huge. The metric system has no nice unit which corresponds to one mil. A micron is quite small: it's 25.4 mils. (How about ten of them and calling it a decamicron? Ha.) Inches themselves are also a nice size, so I tend to use them for measuring household things: widths of cabinets and shelves and the like. Last time I designed a closet shelf, I used Sketchup and everything in inches. Centimeters are too small. Common objects that have two-digit inch measurements blow up to three digits in centimeters. Centimeters don't have a good, concise way to express the precision of a measurement (other than the ridiculous formality of adding a +/- tolerance). In inches, I can quote something as being 8 1/16 inch long. This tells us not only the absolute length, but also the granularity: the fact that I didn't say 8 2/32 or 8 4/64 tells you something: that I care only about sixteeth precision. The 8 1/16 measurement is probably an approximation of something that lies between 8 1/32 and 8 3/32, expressed concisely. In centimeters, a measurement like 29 cm may be somewhat crude. But 29.3 cm might be ridiculously precise. It makes 29.4 look wrong, even though it may the case that anything in the 29.1-29.5 range is acceptable. The 10X jump in scale between centimeters and millimeters is just too darn large. The binary divisions in the imperial system give you 3.3 geometric steps inside one order of magnitude, which is useful. For a particular project, you can chose that it's going to be snapped to a 1/4" grid, or 1/8" or 1/16" based on the required precision. So for these reasons, I have gravitated toward inches, even though I was raised metric, and came to a country that turned metric before I got here. (And of course, the easy availability of rulers and tape measures marked in inches, plus support in software applications, and the enduring use of these measures in trade: e.g. you can go to a hardware store in Canada and find 3/4" wood.)

philh 11y ago

> If a number is printed on a computer display, it must look like 123456.78, not like "123 456,78"! Humans find thousands separators useful. You're asking humans to give up useful things because they're hard to program. That said, I idly wonder whether they could be implemented with font kerning. The bytes could be 123456.78, but the font could render it with extra space, as 123 456.78. I don't know if it's possible with current font technology, and there are probably all sorts of problems with it even if it is, but it might be vaguely useful.

kazinator 11y ago
Humans should agree on the decimal and separator symbols, the same way that they agreed on the Indo-Arabic numerals, and symbols like + (plus) and - (minus).
- uf 11y ago
  Like we all agreed to the metric system already?
plugnburn 11y ago
I don't get neither how thousands separator is useful, nor what a "genius" came up with an idea to make comma a decimal separator in computers. I have nothing against either of these things in handwriting (though I personally never separate thousands), but in computing?.. I agree though that this can (and should) be solved at font-rendering level, not at an application level.