[frameworks-kcoreaddons] [Bug 428045] Use metric units for file sizes

[Erik Quaeghebeur]

https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=428045

--- Comment #2 from Erik Quaeghebeur <kde at equaeghe.nospammail.net> ---
(In reply to Harald Sitter from comment #1)
> 
> This very issue was discussed at length in at least 2009 and I don't see the
> points having changed much. MB is being used wildly inconsistently to mean
> either base 10 or base 2 so the decision was to use ISO/IEC labelling as it
> is at very least unambiguous.
> 
> The way I see it the sad truth here is that we cannot use MB=base10 because
> the rest of common software uses MB=base2 e.g. firefox downloads 1.23MB but
> if we were to make the suggested change then in dolphin it'd be 1.29MB. But
> it extends further than that... my mobile internet plan comes with 10GB of
> data, I'll leave you to guess how much that actually is - […]
1. IEC prefixes are unambiguous only for people that know about them, which is
not lay people.

2. I agree that there is some confusion about MB, GB, etc (less so kB, because
of KB), because of incorrect usage by various software (Windows…). Sometimes
people even care about that (hard drive space surprises). The solution is for
more software to use the correct definitions.

3. I disagree that “the rest of common software uses MB-base2”. Namely, there's
Ubuntu's Units Policy <https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UnitsPolicy> and macOS has for a
long time now used decimal prefixes
<https://eshop.macsales.com/blog/1852-snow-leopard-changes-they-way-we-look-at-gigabytes-and-megabytes-and-kilobytes-as-well/>.
I think this is one area where Apple showed leadership and KDE shouldn't be the
last one to follow.

The fact that KDE uses IEC (as does Firefox nowadays, AFAICT) means that it
does not commit the same mistake as Windows. But that does not fix the actual
usability issue of base2 prefixes: they are used in combination with decimal
numbers, meant for consumption by lay people. These people do not know about
base2, IEC, etc. 
Those who do know can deal with the change to decimal. Other will finally have
their file sizes displayed in a clear way. (Others have discussed this more
elaborately:
<https://randomascii.wordpress.com/2016/02/13/base-ten-for-almost-everything/>.)

You did not comment on my arguments, but I think they're valid. (Please state
whether you agree or not.) You mentioned other arguments that are also valid.
So it becomes a question of what weighs heavier. As long as IEC is the default,
the usability issue is there. I therefore think a switch to decimal is
inevitable. Because of that, I see no reason to postpone the move to decimal.
The argument about other software then becomes mostly moot, because they'll
switch as well at some point. 

Prompted by your reply, I looked around a bit and indeed there has been quite
some discussion about this (and JEDEC) already, sometimes with heated comments.
I guess with the above, I'm joining in. I do not know how much people's
opinions have evolved since when these discussions were active, but this may
mean that changing the default is an impossible decision to make, as this is
just too hot of an issue. 

There is another solution:

Make the default configurable as it was in KDE 4 days: See Bug 364321. It was
actually the closing of this bug report that prompted my bug reports. David
Edmundson says “We use the right thing in the right places.  […] If an app does
the wrong thing please report it there.” It seems that people disagree about
what is ‘the right thing in the right places’. So then that bug would need to
be reopened.

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