88666 - Inconsistency in the use of "KB" or "KBytes"

Status: VERIFIED FIXED

(SeaMonkey :: Preferences, defect, P4)

Description

[Henrik Gemal]

Prefs -> Offline has "KB" while Prefs -> Advanced -> Cache has KBytes

We should be consistent.

20010630

Comment 1

[sairuh (rarely reading bugmail)]

agreed, should definitely be consistent.

jglick, should we be using "KB" or "KBytes" within the Preferences panels? i'm
guessing the latter, but i'm not sure what the spec sez...

Comment 2

[Diane Sun]

In 4.x  it uses "kB".  I guess we should go for "KB"

Comment 3

[timeless]

get rid of KBytes, anything but that!

Comment 4

[Diane Sun]

Attachment: Fixes

Comment 5

[timeless]

i know this is an additional imposition, could we please change the entity name 
from 'kbyes' to 'kbytes'?

if you don't want to do that, or would prefer to do that in a new bug, then 
r=timeless for changing the string values.

w/ a warning that we usually don't change locales other than en-US (it's left 
to the localizers to catch up) -- I'm inconsistent on this point for things 
like this I would be willing to make the change for all locales -- although we 
should probably give a heads up to the owners of those files and ask before 
changing them. They might have some other formating style (extra spaces, 
punctuation..)

Comment 6

[James Green]

Er, hold on here, do we really want to create another cause for the user to
become confused. Hands up all Internet users who knows the difference between
'kb' and 'KB' or 'kB' or whatever? Not many. By using 'Kbytes' and 'Kbits' we
can avoid this altogether; if they misread the word that's their problem, but I
certainly don't want to assume they know there's a standard for saying that
lower case is bits, upper case is bytes (some might think the other way around).

Comment 7

[Diane Sun]

If someones do not know 'kb' and 'KB' or 'kB', they may not know how to 
configure the space either, in that case, all they can do is just use the 
default value. It would be very unsual for a computer not knowing KB or kb. By 
the way, we have been consistently using 'kB" in 4.x

Comment 8

[timeless]

kB is fine. As i said earlier anything but KBytes.  and of course be consistent 
across mozilla.

Comment 9

[Diane Sun]

Attachment: Change kbyes to kbytes

Comment 10

[Diane Sun]

Request R & SR,  Any one on the cc list?

Comment 11

[Håkan Waara]

1. I'm not sure you should change all the l10n-ers language packs. They'll do
that themselves. Not even sure if we are *allowed* to do it.

2. - #3 will be replaced by the download rate (in Kbytes per second) -->
-<!ENTITY progressMsg "#1K of #2K bytes (at #3K bytes/sec)">
+    #3 will be replaced by the download rate (in KB per second) -->
+<!ENTITY progressMsg "#1KB of #2KB (at #3KB/sec)">

Have you checked that the code which originally replaces "2#K bytes" (and the
other strings) with the variable value works when you change that string?

It's critical that you test it.

Comment 12

[racham]

Adding Tao for comments on the changes made to various packages here.

Yes. We need some testing here and some screenshots for dialogs like download
progress. 

Is 'KB' the the agreed convention to be used..? You mentioned that 'kB' is the
4.x convention. Just bringing this up in case it is unintentional. Jennifer, can
you confirm the right convention to be used here ?

Comment 13

[Henrik Gemal]

shouldn't
#1KB of #2KB
be
#1 KB of #2 KB
?

Comment 14

[Håkan Waara]

I don't know about different languages, but in the english version we should
certainly use the "2KB" version because that is what we use elsewhere in the
app. Consistency.

Comment 15

[jglick]

cc'ing tech pubs folks, I don't know what the correct convention for this 
is.  As timeless mentions, consistency across the app is important whatever is 
decided.

(I also agree with James Green's comment (2001-07-03 12:52) that we shouldn't 
assume users knows the difference between 'kb', 'KB', 'kB'.)

Comment 16

[Henrik Gemal]

German: Couldn't we get somekind of main dictionary where it was stated how we 
spelled different stuff. Like "KB", "KBytes". Do we say sites or websites. Do we 
say "Mail & News" or "MailNews" etc...
My company have a document like this and it really helps the different 
people/products to be consistent in the wording...

Comment 17

[Blake Ross]

Missed the 0.9.3 train.

Comment 18

[robinf]

The technical pubs style guide lists KB as the accepted abbreviation, so we
should follow that convention.

Comment 19

[Diane Sun]

From the discussion, most people have agreed on "KB".  Could I get R & SR 
please?

Comment 20

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

sr=sspitzer on the change to KB

Comment 21

[eddyk]

While the changes look fine to me, does anyone else need to be brought into
this, such as someone from i18n?
I ask this because I saw that there were changes to the comments in some of the
foreign language packs, but no associated change in the entities for them.

Comment 22

[tao]

> Comments From Håkan Waara (vacation) 2001-07-06 18:51
> 1. I'm not sure you should change all the l10n-ers language packs. They'll do
> that themselves. Not even sure if we are *allowed* to do it.

You are right. Making the changes in the US build only will be sufficient. Thanks 
for taking l10n directories into account, though :-)

Comment 23

[tao]

r=tao 

Comment 24

[Diane Sun]

checked in.

Comment 25

[Jeremy M. Dolan]

Uggg... You've standardized on "KB"?! I didn't know it was possible to measure
data size in Kelvin Bels.

Comment 26

[Henrik Gemal]

We now use "KB" in the prefs. I've opened some new bugs so that we use "KB" all 
over Mozilla.

btw: I dont care if we use "KB" or "KBytes". I just want consistency!

Comment 27

[Peter Lairo]

In another bug about the subject line filesize formatting, someone referred to
some book on standard abbreviations for units of measure (something about Physics).

I suggest we use those standards when displaying our units (e.g., kilo bytes). I
don't think this bug is fixed until we have done this (unless you want a new bug
on this issue).