On 2022-01-08, at 23:11, Dave McGuire <mcguire@...> wrote:

The big issues come when line wrapping splits the units from their quantities. I can't stand that.

(The non-breaking space U+00A0 was invented for avoiding such line breaks.
As with ? and ¦¸, that is easier to type on some platforms than on others.
Unfortunately, my mail composer doesn¡¯t seem to like it at all.)
Gr¨¹?e, Carsten

I have a 141T mainframe that working, OK, but I noticed if I advance the intensity (brightness) adjustment close to max the intensity falls back off. It doesn't go out, it just gets dimmer. Any ideas on this before I dig into it?

Thanks,
Dave

Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote:"

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds,
adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.
With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do.
He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall.

Speak what you think now in hard words, and to-morrow speak
what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict
every thing you said to-day.

¡ª 'Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood.'
¡ª Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood?

Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus,
and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton,
and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh.

To be great is to be misunderstood.

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds
adored by little statesmen and philosophers and devines.
With consistency a great soul has nothing to do.
He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall."

The convention of putting a space, or not putting a space, between a
number and a unit is about clarity.

It's your writing. If you find it more clear when you put in a space,
then do that. If you find it more clear when you don't put in a space,
then that is what you should do.

It's your writing, and the only payment you are ever going to get for
doing that writing is the pleasure of spending some of your precious
little time on this earth writing... Well, that and the pleasure of
being criticized because you didn't write it the way some reader wanted
to read it.

99% of the time, I choose to not put a space between the number and its
units, because I find the spacing of the fixed pitch typographic fonts
that I prefer, to be rather wide already. Adding a space divorces the
unit from the number. Further, automatic line wrapping algorithms take
no heed of your desire for the number and unit to be together, and often
will put those at the end of a line onto different lines.

Which, rather doesn't improve the clarity of your writing.

-Chuck Harris

On Sat, 8 Jan 2022 08:17:10 +0100 "Carsten
Bormann" <cabocabo@...> wrote:

On 8. Jan 2022, at 05:40, Dave McGuire <mcguire@...> wrote:

AS / ISO 1000:1998 is the standard for display of SI units. It
says there should be a single space between the numeral and the
unit-cum-multiplier.

Is that a current standard?

No.

See ¡ª the ISO/IEC 80000
series has replaced most earlier standards in this space (quantities
and units).

But the rule stands.

ISO 80000-1:2009 Section 7.1.4 has this to say:

7.1.4 Expressions for quantities

The symbol of the unit shall be placed after the numerical value
in the expression for a quantity, leaving a space between the
numerical value and the unit symbol. It should be noted that this
rule also applies to the units per cent, % and per mil, ¡ë. It
should also be noted that, in accordance with this rule, the
symbol ¡ãC for the degree Celsius shall be preceded by a space when
expressing a Celsius temperature.

The only exceptions to this rule are for the units degree, minute
and second for plane angle, in which case there shall be no space
between the numerical value and the unit symbol.

Can¡¯t provide a link, because
hides
most of the document until you pay for it. (Most of ISO/IEC 80000
actually is accessible there because it is in the definitions
sections, which are not behind the paywall. But not this rule.)

If you don¡¯t want to buy tons of ISO standards, the basics of units
and quantities for electrotechnical work have been written up by
Rohde and Schwarz (who used to be the distributor of HP equipment in
Germany a few decades ago, but mostly peddles their own instruments
right now). I found this document, of all places, in their career
section; apparently you are supposed to be able to read, write,
calculate, and clearly express your units if you want to work there:



If you don¡¯t trust URL shorteners, here is the full link:



Mandatory reading.
(The specific rule that there is a space between the number and the
unit is so ingrained that isn¡¯t even spelled out as such here, but is
consistently used in the examples.)

(I don¡¯t like all these rules, just like I don¡¯t always like English
spelling very much :-) But it is the standard¡­ So I don¡¯t meik ahp
mai oun ruulz.)

Gr¨¹?e, Carsten