789912 - Incorrect abbreviation of "kilobytes"

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 108147

(Firefox :: Downloads Panel, defect)

Description

[david.smitmanis]

Kilobytes is abbreviated as "KB" in both the doorhanger menu and the Download Manager window. The correct abbrevation is "kB".

Firefox 15 abbreviates it correctly as "kB".

Comment 1

[Marco Bonardo [:mak]]

yeah, minor issue but thanks for pointing it out.

Comment 2

[Raymond Lee [:raymondlee]]

Attachment: Trivial patch

Comment 3

[Marco Bonardo [:mak]]

Though, we must put a bit of attention since I seem to recall a past bug regarding kibibytes usages, and the fact we were not going to use them cause were not common to the user. It's indeed possible we are using the uppercase K vs the lowercase version to differentiate 1024 vs 1000 units (that was sort of convention used before kibi was introduced).

Comment 4

[Marco Bonardo [:mak]]

and I have to point out bug 106618 and bug 108147

Comment 5

[Marco Bonardo [:mak]]

So according to the above we should, in an ideal world, change all the codebase to properly use kB and kiB, changing KB to kB is going to confuse since the former has historically been used as 1024 while the latter as 1000. The fact is we always wontfixed the kiB introduction cause it would have confused users and drive them away from Firefox (IE and Windows and most PC peripherals, as floppies, were using KB at that time I think). I wonder if compared to other browsers that would still be the case.

Comment 6

[Marco Bonardo [:mak]]

to clarify why I originally confirmed the bug, I thought it was a single string or usage... but now looking at the patch is a more wide project, so it involves quite more problematics. It may end up being another wontfix, unless we figure most OS and browsers today are doing it properley.

Comment 7

[david.smitmanis]

Usage varies. It's kB in Windows 7, but KB in Ubuntu. I think it's kB in Chrome, It used to be kB in Firefox (still is in release), which is why reported it in the first place. Going from correct usage to incorrect felt like a regression, albeit a tiny one.

bug 108147 suggests this is probably wontfix though, and that the change to KB was a conscious decision. I'm not sure exactly who will be confused by kiB but at the same time know and care about whether it's 1024 or 1000. And I'm not sure why writing KB will make them less confused.

Either way, bottom line, bug 108147 is the same as this, and this should probably be wontfix. Unless someone wants to argue otherwise, I'll close it in a few days.

Comment 8

[david.smitmanis]

Actually, it seems to be KB in English release as well. The kB might be only in the Swedish localization... So that's a different issue, but this probably should be closed. Sorry for wasting people's time.

Comment 9

[Marco Bonardo [:mak]]

thanks, you can file a bug for the swedish localization, fwiw

Comment 10

[Nicolas Barbulesco]

According to David, the Swedish localization is correct.

Comment 11

[david.smitmanis]

It's kB in Swedish and KB in English. Which one is correct is for someone else to decide.

Comment 12

[Nicolas Barbulesco]

(In reply to david.smitmanis from comment #11)

> It's kB in Swedish and KB in English. Which one is correct is for someone
> else to decide.

This is “someone else” :

www.bipm.org/en/si

K is kelvin, k is kilo.

Comment 13

[Virtual_ManPL [:Virtual] 🇵🇱 - (please needinfo? me - so I will see your comment/reply/question/etc.)]

kB (wrongly used as "KB") - kilobyte
it's decimal prefix
1 kilobyte = 10^3 bytes = 1000 bytes

KB (should be officially "KiB") - kibibyte
it's binary prefix
1 kibibyte = 2^10 bytes = 1024 bytes