[plug] [OT] ISO and SI - was Calculator that uses commas , for thousands seperation

[Richard Meyer]

On Wed, 2005-07-13 at 11:29 +0800, Bernd Felsche wrote:
> Gavin Chester <gavinchester1 at hotmail.com> writes:
> >On Tue, 2005-07-12 at 11:19 +0800, Richard Meyer wrote:
> 
> >> > Anyway it was along the lines of Australia will be adopting the
> >> > numerical formats supported by the EU. This, from memory,
> >> > involves replacing the humble '.' decimal separator with a ','
> >> > and I think spaces in between each "set" of thousand. Or
> >> > something of that nature. Can't remember the time frame, I
> >> > think it was something like 10 years. 
> 
> >> > There was also something about date separators changing from '/' to
> >> > something else.. 
> 
> >> > Others please feel free to jump in and correct any mistakes or
> >> > oversights, coffee hasn't kicked in yet.. 
> 
> >> Yup, that's the European format
> >> 123,456.78  becomes
> >> 123 456,78  Gonna confuse the crap out of you for a few years  ;-)
> 
> >> Had it in South Africa since the seventies.
> 
> >What does this mean in terms of teaching the kids the SI* units that
> >have existed for god knows how long as the standard for all/most
> >disciplines?  This convention you're talking about breaks with that as
> >far as I can see, so it is just rubbish to be confusing the kids and
> >public IMHO.
> 
> >*(SI = Systeme International d'Unites - you have to say it with a French
> >accent ;-) for those not familiar)
> 
> "Nothing" to do with SI. Lots to do with ISO.
> Ambiguity in trade (and technology) would be reduced.
> 
> Although it's unlikely that yoou'd want to order a steel rod with a
> diameter of 24,000 mm in Australia; it'd be quite common in "ISO
> countries".

I do find date formats under ISO
http://www.iso.org/iso/en/prods-services/popstds/datesandtime.html

but I see nothing available on the web from their site that doesn't cost
money - but ISO 31 (Quantities and units) and 1000 (SI units and
recommendations for the use of their multiples and of certain other
units) look promising. But they deal with APPLYING SI. So it looks as
though SI are the rules, while the ISO are the organisation that ensures
the laws are applied by the regulations (from ISO).

And since the SI sites I cited gave us the thousands/decimalization
info, I'm not too worried, especially since the ISO site
http://www.iso.org/iso/en/prods-services/popstds/quantitiesandunits.html
says 

> The SI is a system of units adopted by the highest international
> authority on units, i.e. the General Conference on Weights and
> Measures (Conférence Général des Poids et Mesures, CGPM). It is
> founded on older metric systems, and has been designed to be suitable
> for use in every context - customary, technical, and scientific.
> 
> The SI is built in such a way that only one unit is used for each kind
> of quantity. This makes the total number of units less and the system
> becomes easier to learn and to use.
> 
> The structure of the system also makes calculations easier. The
> benefits of the SI are most evident when its rules are applied
> consistently.
> 
> ISO has also published the ISO standards handbookQuantities and units,
> containing the complete set of the ISO 31 standards, as well as ISO
> 1000.

-- 
Richard Meyer <meyerri at westnet.com.au>
Cutting the space budget really restores my faith in humanity.  It
eliminates dreams, goals, and ideals and lets us get straight to the
business of hate, debauchery, and self-annihilation.
                -- Johnny Hart