[okfn-labs] Units protocol

[Donald McLean]

What about the binary prefixes?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_prefix


On Fri, May 31, 2013 at 7:14 PM, Andrew Berkeley <
andrew.berkeley.is at googlemail.com> wrote:

> Hello all,
>
> I thought this would be a good place to flag up a tentative new data
> protocol for describing physical units.
>
> It is described here here: http://www.dataprotocols.org/**
> en/latest/units.html <http://www.dataprotocols.org/en/latest/units.html>and was motivated by this conversation with Rufus Pollock and James Smith
> https://github.com/**dataprotocols/dataprotocols/**issues/35#issuecomment-
> **18101347<https://github.com/dataprotocols/dataprotocols/issues/35#issuecomment-18101347>
>
> Having a standard way to describe physical quantities (i.e. a number with
> a unit) is a good thing, not least that it might encourage people to
> systematically qualify their numbers with units and may also help to
> disambiguate confusing units (e.g. ton, tonne).
>
> Probably the greatest benefit in my eyes though is the ability to be able
> to produce machine readable data which can be processed irrespective of
> using a variety of units. A decent client library would be able to
> convert/standardize such data and perform any required operations if the
> units are described consistently and predictably. I've tried to write such
> a thing for Ruby and have made a start on a similar JS library.
>
> Really, the 2 main points in the protocol are (1) a unique reference for
> each supported unit, and (2) a standard way of describing compound units
> (i.e. combinations of units).
>
> Any comments on, suggestions or contributions to the suggested protocol
> would be very welcome.
>
> Cheers
>
> Andrew
> @spatchcockable
>
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