The Technology Vent and Rant Thread

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by dandaman

Oh well, change the entire world instead of just the US.

We have legal size if we want longer paper.

[John F]

Originally Posted by dandaman

Oh well, change the entire world instead of just the US.

Interesting, Canada doesn't count?

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by dandaman

Oh well, change the entire world instead of just the US.

United States, Canada, Mexico, Belize, Costa Rica, Colombia, Venezuela, Chile, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Panama, Puerto Rico, and Venezuela, Philippines

These are the countries where letter size paper is used instead of A4.

[Solitaire1]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

I find A4 to be an odd size. Let Letter live and A4 go away.

Why not just have both available to use, and let the user decide? Like with the Metric System vs. the U. S. Customary System, the paper sizes in the A Scale were designed with a plan, while the paper sizes used in the U. S. are basically what someone decided to use at one time and people just stayed with it.

The one exception is Legal Size. In Legal Offices they used to use letter-sized paper and then attach an extra 3 inches of paper as a place for necessary seals and other annotations. Eventually, they just produced paper that was 8.5" by 14" inches (Legal Size) and the Typists would type on it as if it was 11" long.

One thing I've not understood is why book sizes are so varied. With comic book they are basically all the same size (although they did shrink a bit in the 1970s) and that include most trade paperbacks, but with books you've got a multitude of sizes. I just looked at my bookshelf and I've got at least six different book sizes and the only types that seem to have a consistent size are paperbacks and manga. Why?

[BetterRed]

Non trade paperbacks vary in size just as much as hardbacks, mainly depends on publisher, e.g Bloomsbury are a bit longer than Virago.

BR

[jbjb]

Originally Posted by Solitaire1

Why not just have both available to use, and let the user decide? Like with the Metric System vs. the U. S. Customary System, the paper sizes in the A Scale were designed with a plan, while the paper sizes used in the U. S. are basically what someone decided to use at one time and people just stayed with it.

All other things being equal, a single standard is usually better than multiple competing standards.

The Metric/US Customary/Imperial situation causes confusion, sometimes with catastrophic results (e.g. NASA's Mars Climate Orbiter). Admittedly, different paper sizes is unlikely to cause any issue of that magnitude, but it can be a pain when sharing documents formatted for different paper sizes across different regions.

It's generally only a minor inconvenience, so it's not a big deal, but the A-series system makes logical sense in a way that the US sizes don't, so also bearing in mind that the majority of the world already uses it, if we were to settle on one system the ISO/A-series sizes seem the obvious choice.

[mpeg2]

Originally Posted by jbjb

All other things being equal, a single standard is usually better than multiple competing standards.

This reminds me of one of my favorite XKCD strips: https://xkcd.com/927

Having spent a large part of my career creating broadcast TV standards, this resonated...

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Solitaire1

Why not just have both available to use, and let the user decide? Like with the Metric System vs. the U. S. Customary System, the paper sizes in the A Scale were designed with a plan, while the paper sizes used in the U. S. are basically what someone decided to use at one time and people just stayed with it.

The one exception is Legal Size. In Legal Offices they used to use letter-sized paper and then attach an extra 3 inches of paper as a place for necessary seals and other annotations. Eventually, they just produced paper that was 8.5" by 14" inches (Legal Size) and the Typists would type on it as if it was 11" long.

One thing I've not understood is why book sizes are so varied. With comic book they are basically all the same size (although they did shrink a bit in the 1970s) and that include most trade paperbacks, but with books you've got a multitude of sizes. I just looked at my bookshelf and I've got at least six different book sizes and the only types that seem to have a consistent size are paperbacks and manga. Why?

You will need to say more then just the US. Look at the list of countries I posted that use letter size paper. So don't say this is just a US only thing. It's not. If you want to berate countries that use letter size, you'll need to list them.

[JSWolf]

Currently, all my eBooks use the same page size.

[dandaman]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

United States, Canada, Mexico, Belize, Costa Rica, Colombia, Venezuela, Chile, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Panama, Puerto Rico, and Venezuela, Philippines

These are the countries where letter size paper is used instead of A4.

So North and South America, nearly?

[pdurrant]

There's less than 500m people in countries that use US Letter.
As opposed to about 7.5 billion people in countries that use A series paper.

It's even more stark when you look at metric vs imperial. There are only three countries in the world that don't use the metric system: Liberia, Myanmar and USA.

[dandaman]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

There's less than 500m people in countries that use US Letter.
As opposed to about 7.5 billion people in countries that use A series paper.

It's even more stark when you look at metric vs imperial. There are only three countries in the world that don't use the metric system: Liberia, Myanmar and USA.

Well, the UK still uses at least some metric units

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by dandaman

Well, the UK still uses at least some metric units

Did you mean Imperial? Yes, miles and pints commercially. The 1979 government abolished the metrication board prematurely and stopped the changeover.

Some people do still use feet and inches for a person's height and stones and pounds for a person's weight. But metric units are also often used for those measurements, and always in professional contexts.

[Solitaire1]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

You will need to say more then just the US. Look at the list of countries I posted that use letter size paper. So don't say this is just a US only thing. It's not. If you want to berate countries that use letter size, you'll need to list them.

I wasn't berating countries that use Letter-size paper, I just mentioned it was used in the U. S.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by dandaman

Well, the UK still uses at least some metric units

The UK has not fully gone metric.