Martin Vlietstra proposes a new British technical keyboard that includes non-breaking spaces and some common characters used for metric symbols. In his proposal, he considered various categories of user and using the restriction of inline Unicode characters, has proposed a keyboard that will not only handle all the characters needed by SI, but will also handle many of the characters needed for chemical formulae, and includes Greek characters such as ‘π’, ‘θ’ and other commonly used symbols from mathematics and physics including ‘×’, ‘÷’ and ‘±’. He uses the standard British keyboard as the basis for his proposal and explains how a lot of new characters can be supported using key combinations with the Alt Gr key. It covers a lot more than the extra characters for the correct display of metric symbols.
Continue reading “Proposal for a British Technical Keyboard”Tag: keyboard
Space dilemmas for writing metric symbols and thousands separators
The BIPM’s SI brochure states “The numerical value always precedes the unit and a space is always used to separate the unit from the number.” and says that the space, not a comma or a dot, shall be used for the thousands separator. There are several space characters in computing, but the brochure does not state what kind of space you should use when typing. Ideally, you would use a non-breaking space to ensure that no line break separates the numerical value from the unit. Users face the same issue when using a space for the thousands separator.
Continue reading “Space dilemmas for writing metric symbols and thousands separators”One proposed solution to improve writing of metric symbols
In the third of the series of articles on writing metric symbols, I propose a practical solution to improve the writing of metric symbols. My solution addresses one major source of metric symbol errors that I identified in my previous article.
Continue reading “One proposed solution to improve writing of metric symbols”Too many take the easy way out when writing metric symbols
Following the previous article about the limited impact of UKMA’s Metric Style Guide and the widespread mistakes in writing metric symbols, we look at one major source of these mistakes. Too many avoid the use of awkward characters that cannot be found on a standard keyboard and end up writing metric symbols incorrectly.
Continue reading “Too many take the easy way out when writing metric symbols”
Metric Views 