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Chris Gooch continued the discussion: <<It may come as a shock to North
Americans, but the majority of the world does not drink 567 ml of beer,
drive at 94.345 kph, or use feeler gauges which measure 0.9263 mm at a time.
Oddly, they prefer 500ml, 100kph, and 0.1 mm. :-)>>
Just as it may come as a shock to those in England that only the southern 50
provinces are still using imperial; we in the north have been metric for a
couple decades now--though you can still get a "pint" of the really good
stuff from overseas at some of our finer local establishments, as I imagine
you can over in the U.K. <g> Actually, I don't think I've _ever_ heard
someone ask for draft in metric units.
<<I'm sure that the purpose of doing a metric version of the tuturial would
be to reduce the cognitive loading on the reader by using standard sizes for
parts, which relate to the standard size tools which will be used.>>
Actually, that's a very good reason for switching the tutorial to metric.
Good addition!
<<[NASA] I thought the problem was caused by two sets of engineers failing
to agree to use *just one* set of measurements and stick to it. That way you
don't get to a) do a conversion wrong; b) do a conversion twice; c) fail to
do a conversion.>>
Could be; I confess to having posted lazily and not having gone to the
archives to check the details of NASA's problem. In any event, they didn't
use the same units, and that sank the ship.
<<The lesson being; in Christine's situation, she needs to avoid conversions
being necessary by producing two separate, localised, sets of tutorials.>>
Which was my original suggestion, particularly if the
localisation/translation service helps pick suitable examples (such as the
ones you mentioned).
--Geoff Hart, FERIC, Pointe-Claire, Quebec
geoff-h -at- mtl -dot- feric -dot- ca
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