[PATCH] Add option to use traditional binary units instead of kibibytes

[Michael Pyne]

On Monday 06 July 2009 17:02:16 Marcel Partap wrote:
> > >The patch is wrong.
> > >This is the standard.
> > >Not doing it would be wrong.
> >
> > Which then must mean that we shouldn't have those units
>
> Very confusing indeed. IMHO there should be an option to switch between
> base 1000 and base 1024 units, for which clear conventions exist.

NO ONE NEEDS BASE 10 UNITS.

Just use KiB and be done with it.  Your "160 GB" hard disk will not ever hold 
160000000000 bytes in practice no matter what unit system you select in 
KControl so it's hardly going to make the users feel any better.

My patch is to add a hidden option to restore normal units for those systems 
that have to support users who use KB/MB/GB.  Since KB/MB/GB means 2^(i*10) 
(i.e. [KMG]iB) on every other system out there, it will have mean the same 
thing here.  This is not "adding" anything, this is restoring behavior that 
was present in KDE 3.5, that was present (and is present) in GNOME, that is 
present in Windows, and that is present in Mac OS X.

I am not adding any GUI options, and I don't intend to add any GUI options, 
and I don't see any reason to add GUI options.  Is there a bug open where 
people are asking for decimal units?  If it's something that's in demand 
that's one thing, but who's asking for it?  I'm not.  (And more to the point, 
KDE is already heavily stereotyped as having numerous needless checkboxes to 
click, this is hardly going to help...)

Actually, better yet, why don't we all just forget I ever tried to fix it?  
I'll publicly post my patch, I'll maintain it myself, and I won't ever commit 
it to svn since apparently technical working documents and standardization 
attempts from 1999 are more convincing to people than common convention.  
Heaven help us if we're not able to locate IEC standards documents allowing 
computer hackers to count from 0, I'm not sure what we'll do then.

Regards,
 - Michael Pyne
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