124336 - kilobyte should be abbreviated "KB", not "K"

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(SeaMonkey :: MailNews: Message Display, defect)

Description

[Michael Wardle]

When subscribing to newsgroups, mailnews first downloads the list of newsgroups.
 During downloading, status text is displayed such as "200K read at 2.4K/sec". 
This is really bad notation.

If we are going to follow standards, the text should read
"200 KiB read at 2.4 KiB/s" (see bug 65710).

If not, we should at least adopt what is most common in recent times, which
would be "200 KB read at 2.4 KB/s".

Comment 1

[Andrew Hagen]

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 65710 ***

Comment 2

[Michael Wardle]

This is not a duplicate.  Everywhere else in the app, kilobyte is abbreviated
"KB".  In this part of mailnews it's still "K", which is wrong.

Comment 3

[Michael Wardle]

If anything, it's closest to bug 64179, which changed "K" to "KB" and was fixed.
 This bug was related to the installer, tho.  This is the same thing happening
in mailnews, and should be fixed in the same way.

Comment 4

[Hixie (not reading bugmail)]

Since 106618 decided the SI notation was pathetic, rephrasing the title to not
include the SI alternative, lest this bug get misunderstood.

Comment 5

[Skewer]

See also bug 65710 for my comments about proper labeling of kilobytes ("kB").

Comment 6

[Mikel Ward]

Attachment: diff of chrome properties files, changes "K/sec" to "KB/sec"

A one-line change to change an occurence of "K" to "KB" in the news properties
file.

I think that "sec" should actually be "s" and there should be a space between
the number and the unit, but I have made neither change to retain consistency
with other such text strings within Mozilla.

Comment 7

[Mikel Ward]

Adding my home account to the CC list.

Technically this is applicable to all OSs (change was made to generic en-US
locale, not platform-dependent), so if somebody could please change OS->All...

Comment 8

[Mikel Ward]

What do I have to do to get this checked in?

Comment 9

[Andrew Hagen]

Confirming bug. Patch exists. Nominating for Mozilla1.0. This is a minor change,
and it helps Mozilla look good.

Comment 10

[Steve Chapel]

Trying to help get this patch in.

Comment 11

[(not reading, please use [e-mail] instead)]

Comment on attachment 70058 [details] [diff] [review]
diff of chrome properties files, changes "K/sec" to "KB/sec"

sr=sspitzer, since this is consistent.

C:\trees\trunk\mozilla\embedding\components\ui\progressDlg\locale\en-US\nsProgr
essDialog.dtd(90):    #3 will be replaced by the download rate (in KB per
second) -->
C:\trees\trunk\mozilla\embedding\components\ui\progressDlg\locale\en-US\nsProgr
essDialog.dtd(91):<!ENTITY progressMsg "#1KB of #2KB (at #3KB/sec)">
C:\trees\trunk\mozilla\mailnews\base\prefs\resources\locale\en-US\am-offline.dt
d(8):<!ENTITY kb.label "KB">
C:\trees\trunk\mozilla\mailnews\base\prefs\resources\locale\en-US\pref-diskspac
e.dtd(33):<!ENTITY kb.label			  "KB">
C:\trees\trunk\mozilla\mailnews\base\resources\locale\en-US\messenger.propertie
s(278):quotaUsedFree=%S of %S KB used
C:\trees\trunk\mozilla\xpfe\browser\resources\locale\en-US\metadata.properties(
9):imageSize=%S KB (%S bytes)
C:\trees\trunk\mozilla\xpfe\browser\resources\locale\en-US\pageInfo.properties(
70):generalSize=%S KB (%S bytes)
C:\trees\trunk\mozilla\xpfe\components\download-manager\resources\locale\en-US\
downloadmanager.dtd(26):<!ENTITY progressMsgNoRate "#1KB of #2KB">
C:\trees\trunk\mozilla\xpfe\components\download-manager\resources\locale\en-US\
downloadmanager.dtd(27):<!ENTITY rateMsg "#1KB/sec">
C:\trees\trunk\mozilla\xpfe\components\download-manager\resources\locale\en-US\
downloadmanager.properties(1):transferred=%1SKB of %2SKB
C:\trees\trunk\mozilla\xpfe\components\prefwindow\resources\locale\en-US\pref-c
ache.dtd(9):<!ENTITY  kbytes			    "KB">
C:\trees\trunk\mozilla\xpfe\components\prefwindow\resources\locale\en-US\pref-o
ffline.dtd(25):<!ENTITY kb.label "KB">
C:\trees\trunk\mozilla\xpfe\components\xfer\resources\locale\en-US\downloadProg
ress.dtd(28):<!ENTITY progressMsg "#1KB of #2KB (at #3KB/sec)">

neil can you land this?

Comment 12

[(not reading, please use [e-mail] instead)]

re-assign, for proper credit.

Comment 13

[[e-mail]]

Fix checked in.

Comment 14

[Alan Eliasen]

The fix for this bug is incorrect (as is the summary line.)  The correct
capitalization for kilo in all international standards is that the k is in
lowercase, and has been for ages.  Other uses are incorrect, and look odd to
people familiar with the proper notation.  I'm not advocating the use of
kibibytes, but kB is closer to correct.  See: 
http://physics.nist.gov/cuu/Units/prefixes.html

Please re-open.

Comment 15

[Steve Chapel]

Bug 65710 is for changing from KB to the precisely defined SI units for amounts
of data. That bug is probably where further discussion should take place.