Why doesn't `KB` exist?

[reyalka]

Why does KB not exist?

numbat can use units such as MB and GB, but it cannot handle KB.
I understand that we can indeed use the notation kB instead of KB, but I find this behavior very unnatural.

I understand that the “k” should be in lowercase as a SI prefix, but I would still like to see "K" accepted for usability reasons.

[Goju-Ryu]

I think this might be a common enough notation for binary units to add for them specifically. I am however worried if allowing upper case K for binary but not metric units is more confusing. I don't like the idea of allowing it for metric units though as the capitalization is significant.

[mihirmanna]

For what it's worth, I've only ever seen and used "kB" for decimal and "KiB" for binary units. I agree that

I am however worried if allowing upper case K for binary but not metric units is more confusing.

Especially since SI prefixes (which the byte system uses) already have an established capitalization scheme. Just my thoughts, I'm curious about others' experiences! :)

[sharkdp]

Yeah, KB is definitely very common, even though it's technically wrong. I also ran into this a few times when copy&pasting something into Numbat.

I don't want to support arbitrary things like mb or kb, but probably it wouldn't hurt to add an alias unit KB = kB? KiB is still distinct from KB.

[reyalka]

I agree that simply adding an alias like unit KB = kB is a great idea. However, due to the current design of Numbat, we can't directly add aliases for dynamically defined units like kB using @aliases.

Below are the candidates:

• Create a new file like numbat/modules/**/aliases.nbt
• Add an alias in numbat/modules/units/bit.nbt

I think adding just an alias in the existing file is a great idea.

[Goju-Ryu]

This might actually relate to issue #746 as well. Maybe having more options for aliasing would impact how this should be implemented or maybe this issue should be considered in relation to fixing the other.