Review Request: The KSystemActivityDialog uses MB as default unit.

[Aaron J. Seigo]

On Tuesday, November 30, 2010, Matthias Fuchs wrote:
> Actually the first suggestion would use KLocale::formatByteSize , while the
> second one would keep the current state, yet still makeing the numbers more
> readable imho.

using a separator (giving "600,000") is probably a reasonable idea, but i have 
to agree with Sebastian and John about the readability factor.

the columns should be vertically scannable; with different units they won't 
be, at least not quickly. it will also require that the user is familiar with 
the units and their relationships to do necessary conversions for comparison.

this gets even trickier when we take into consideration that there are 
different numbers in the same row: e.g. Memory vs Shared Memory; IO Write vs 
IO Read. having to convert between Kb, Mb and Gb just because it's taking 
"600k" of "Memory" but "15.8 MB" of "Shared Memory" is just annoying.

the question, for readability, comes down to this, imho: "Are people better at 
distinguishing between number values or unit types?" iow, can most people get 
useful information quicker and more accurately from "60,000 versus 500" or "60 
MB versus 500 KB". the answer is almost certainly going to be "number values".

also, i don't think it makes sense to show MB (or MiB, depending on KLocale's 
whims :) rather than KB because many process still take far less than 1 MB and 
to have useful accuracy it would require multiple decimal points (0.004 MB for 
several processes here on my laptop, in fact) which just leads to a whole new 
issue with meaningful alignment of numbers along the decimal point.

no, keep it simple. kb is a good granularity. one unit keeps visual scan 
comparisons easy. adding separators would probably help with that.

-- 
Aaron J. Seigo
humru othro a kohnu se
GPG Fingerprint: 8B8B 2209 0C6F 7C47 B1EA  EE75 D6B7 2EB1 A7F1 DB43

KDE core developer sponsored by Qt Development Frameworks
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