[digikam] [Bug 374135] Storage capacity shows lower unit than actual capacity

[Simon Frei]

On 25/12/16 14:44, Victor Engmark wrote:
> https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=374135
>
> --- Comment #4 from Victor Engmark <victor.engmark at gmail.com> ---
> (In reply to caulier.gilles from comment #3)
>> The way to display storage unit hurt me also, but this have been normalized
>> by IEC in 1998 and adopted by open source world step by step.
>>
>> Read well this wikipedia pages :
>>
>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megabyte
>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gigabyte#Consumer_confusion
>>
>> If the current storage capacity details respect the norm, this is the right
>> way.
> AFAICT these articles support my assertion that 1000-based units should be
> used:
>
> - IEC recommends 1000-based units: "1 MB = 1000000 bytes (= 10002 B = 106 B) is
> the definition recommended by the International System of Units (SI) and the
> International Electrotechnical Commission IEC.[2] This definition is used in
> networking contexts and most storage media, particularly hard drives,
> flash-based storage,[3] and DVDs […]"
> - "Practically all manufacturers of hard disk drives and flash-memory disk
> devices[3][4] continue to define one gigabyte as 1000 000 000 bytes, which is
> displayed on the packaging."
>
> While GiB is technically *accurate*, GB would therefore be *less confusing*.
>
Whether base 10 or base 2 units are used is debatable, but the naming is
not. It is ubiquitously agreed upon that GB/MB/... mean base 10 and
GiB/MiB/... base 2. True, there is still lots of places where GB/MB/...
is wrongly used for base 2 values, but that is erroneous. Some
circumvent the problem by only writing the prefix (G/M/...) which can
mean anything, but that is in my opinion simply lazy. AFAIK in the linux
world base 2 is still prevailing while windows mostly uses base 10 (I
don't know about apple).
As long as digikam uses consistently the same base in my opinion
anything is fine, just use the correct prefixes. I guess changing from
one prefix to the other would be simply too much effort for too little gain.