Proposal for a British Technical Keyboard

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.

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Government Imperial Units consultation bedevilled by inaccuracy, bias, bodges and computer blunders

The Government consultation into the choice of units of measure in the retail sector [ref 1] has been bedevilled by inaccuracies, bias, bodges and probably computer blunders. The Foreword of the document (unsigned) is not only riddled with inaccuracies and half-truths, but the explanation of the law relating to units of measure in the retail trade bypasses the fundamental principles behind the display of prices.

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