Open Bug 420710 Opened 16 years ago Updated 5 years ago

All CEN localisations should use KiB not KB

Categories

(Mozilla Localizations :: Other, defect)

Product:
Mozilla Localizations
Component:
Other
Type:
defect
Priority:
Not set
Severity:
normal

Tracking

(Not tracked)

People

(Reporter: zurtex, Unassigned)

References

Details

To get in line with the Harmonisation Document (HD 60027-2:2003) being adopted as the European Standard, Firefox should use the IEC prefix KiB (KibiByte). 

It's my general experience that this causes no confusion as most people mistake it for KiloByte anyway, and the current set-up intentionally confuses the user with KiloByte. This would also cause no calculation change as Firefox already calculates downloads in terms of powers of 2, just uses an incorrect notation.

Current members of CEN are:

Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, The Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom.
I notice the at least the en-GB localisation is using kB as apposed to KB, this is at least consistent with the binary interpretation of the SI prefixes. But still not correct.
Both KB and KiB would be grammatically wrong, as the k should be lower case for kilo or kibi. K with a capitol K is Kelvin according to the International Standard for Units (SI).
I suggest kB being used since kiB is not recognized by the general public.
(In reply to comment #2)
> Both KB and KiB would be grammatically wrong, as the k should be lower case for
> kilo or kibi. K with a capitol K is Kelvin according to the International
> Standard for Units (SI).
> I suggest kB being used since kiB is not recognized by the general public.

KB is grammatically wrong and in certain translations like English (British) it is changed to kB. However I think you will find KiB is correct, the reason KB is wrong is that it would mean Kelvin-Byte, but no other SI prefix uses Ki.
Yes, I see you are right from the perspective of Wikipedia article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_prefix - it seems that k and K are equal to each other outside of SI. I would still prefer though that lower case kiB was used to maintain the history of SI usage kB. Even though KiB actually is correct I wouldn't recommend using it since it's not recognized by the general population.
Well the current Mozilla attitude is anything other than KB isn't well recognised enough to use. See bug 106618 and bug 108147
(In reply to comment #4)
> Yes, I see you are right from the perspective of Wikipedia article
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_prefix - it seems that k and K are equal to
> each other outside of SI. I would still prefer though that lower case kiB was
> used to maintain the history of SI usage kB.

KiB is not an SI unit though (as your link mentions), so conforming to your preference of kiB would be incorrect.


Would probably be useful if someone could add localisation teams to this bug for everyone in CEN, I wonder how easy that is?
From the official SI unit web site: http://www.bipm.org/en/si/si_brochure/chapter3/prefixes.html

"These SI prefixes refer strictly to powers of 10. They should not be used to indicate powers of 2 (for example, one kilobit represents 1000 bits and not 1024 bits). The IEC has adopted prefixes for binary powers in the international standard IEC 60027-2: 2005, third edition, Letter symbols to be used in electrical technology – Part 2: Telecommunications and electronics. The names and symbols for the prefixes corresponding to 210, 220, 230, 240, 250, and 260 are, respectively: kibi, Ki; mebi, Mi; gibi, Gi; tebi, Ti; pebi, Pi; and exbi, Ei. Thus, for example, one kibibyte would be written: 1 KiB = 210 B = 1024 B, where B denotes a byte. Although these prefixes are not part of the SI, they should be used in the field of information technology to avoid the incorrect usage of the SI prefixes."

We should be pushing kiB etc.  

Reason it is not publicly know is one because it is new, and second companies with a large installer base, such as Mozilla, wont use it as "it is not used".  Companies such as Mozilla, Microsoft, Apple etc are calling the shots here.
(In reply to comment #7)
> We should be pushing kiB etc.  
> 

We should be pushing KiB etc, yes.
It’s hard to evangelise a new set of units when they keep being mistyped :)

This bug should probably be moved from localisation to user interface if we want more attention.
All units should use SI prefixes (powers of 10). Powers of 2 seem to be only useful for developers, but not for the average user.

So please use kB for 1000 byte and MB for 1,000,000 byte.
A little side note to the last comment here. For the first, I've changed my mind and would like to see KiB instead of kB in Mozilla products (someone has to go first, as with IPv6 too), but back to the side note.
The power of 10 instead of 2 towards consumers has confused them already.
People buy a 200 GB new harddrive and when it's formated in Windows they only have about 169 GB of free space. It is confusing to the general public that we cannot agree about using powers of 10 or powers of 2 consequent.
(In reply to comment #9)
> All units should use SI prefixes (powers of 10). Powers of 2 seem to be only
> useful for developers, but not for the average user.
> 
> So please use kB for 1000 byte and MB for 1,000,000 byte.

But the numbers are actually calculated in powers of 2, not powers of 10, so using the SI powers of 10 units would be incorrect. Please see bug 108147 for your suggestion.
Depends on: 108147
As far as I'm aware, being an engineer, CEN standards for kilo is always with a lower-case 'k', just like SI prefixes. IEC is upper-case, but this bug is only targeted at CEN localisations, so lower-case it should be.
I think, since bug 108147 was marked WONTFIX, this will have to be, too. I don't think there's any way some localizations could use binary units while others use decimal.
Status: NEW → RESOLVED
Closed: 12 years ago
Resolution: --- → WONTFIX
Since bug 108147 was marked WONTFIX en-US will not change KB to kB, however the localisation en-GB was changed from KB to kB. This shows precedent that different localisations more generally observe unit standards than others. Therefore I am reopening on this basis.

Furthermore a misconception on WONTFIX of this bug appears to be that some localisations would use binary while others would use decimal or visa-verse, this is not the case, all localisations  would use the same but would display the standardised unit to represent this in some cases. As I've demonstrated this has precedent (also I believe the French localisation demonstrates this precedent in a different way to en-GB).

Please feel free to WONTFIX again on more likely "No one is going to fix this unless a localisation specialist feels like it and they don't tend to read Bugzilla" basis.
Status: RESOLVED → REOPENED
Resolution: WONTFIX → ---
(In reply to Damian Shaw [Quan] from comment #14)
> Since bug 108147 was marked WONTFIX en-US will not change KB to kB, however
> the localisation en-GB was changed from KB to kB. This shows precedent that
> different localisations more generally observe unit standards than others.
> Therefore I am reopening on this basis.

This is merely a typographic convention change. It does not entail the change in mathematical calculation which the bug summary implies.

> Furthermore a misconception on WONTFIX of this bug appears to be that some
> localisations would use binary while others would use decimal or visa-verse,
> this is not the case, all localisations  would use the same but would
> display the standardised unit to represent this in some cases. As I've
> demonstrated this has precedent (also I believe the French localisation
> demonstrates this precedent in a different way to en-GB).

If the only effort on the table is to change KB to kB, then someone should change the bug summary, because it does not accurately reflect the efforts of the bug. Any misconception was based on the bug summary.

> Please feel free to WONTFIX again on more likely "No one is going to fix
> this unless a localisation specialist feels like it and they don't tend to
> read Bugzilla" basis.

That's also something to consider, but it's hard to do so without an accurate picture of what this bug attempts to accomplish.
> That's also something to consider, but it's hard to do so without an
> accurate picture of what this bug attempts to accomplish.

Please just read the original post...

> To get in line with the Harmonisation Document (HD 60027-2:2003) being 
> adopted as the European Standard, Firefox should use the IEC prefix KiB

> no calculation change as Firefox already calculates downloads in terms 
> of powers of 2, just uses an incorrect notation.
(In reply to Damian Shaw [Quan] from comment #16)
> > That's also something to consider, but it's hard to do so without an
> > accurate picture of what this bug attempts to accomplish.
> 
> Please just read the original post...
> 
> > To get in line with the Harmonisation Document (HD 60027-2:2003) being 
> > adopted as the European Standard, Firefox should use the IEC prefix KiB
> 
> > no calculation change as Firefox already calculates downloads in terms 
> > of powers of 2, just uses an incorrect notation.

Ah, my apologies. That was the point I was missing; I didn't realize that Firefox already did binary calculations.

Looks like we can leave this open after all, though it's still unlikely to be fixed unless somebody makes an effort to do so.
Status: REOPENED → NEW
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