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Re: vector notation



Those are very valid comments, in my opinion. Standards are best when they
properly serve the users. In fact, concern for users and their sometimes
limited capabilities is a reason that our latest standard, IEEE 260.1 on
letter symbols for units, for which I was the chair of the working group,
has an entire clause on how to represent SI symbols in cases where one cannot
properly use super- and subscripts, print the omega or mu, and so forth.
These situtations include the common ones such as writing email and the more
technical ones such as labeling wires and components.

Perhaps this is something that we should look at for the revision being worked
on now for IEEE 270 on quantities and their symbols. At the moment I am
working on editing that document so I will take a closer look for this.

A very large player in this field is of course ISO, which is in the process of
updating and replacing its ISO 31 series. I'm a much, much smaller frog in
that vast pond but I will try to make some noise about this. Another approach
to get this point across would be for you to importune IUPAP to get this into
the ISO standards.

Just as a personal note, I often make available the drafts of the latest ISO
proposals in this series to my colleagues for their review and comment (via
my report to the U.S. TAG). I witness a widepread lack of interest at even
glancing at these. Only a couple of my colleagues here take notice and
perhaps comment.

Jim

On Wednesday 21 July 2004 09:52, Michael Edmiston wrote:
I appreciated the post by Frysinger about working on standards. I
mostly agree, but I have a question about the group of people who reach
"consensus" on the standards. It would seem to me the people working on
standards are already "experienced people" and not students. I think
the group does not represent students and probably not too many math or
science educators.
....

--
James R. Frysinger
Lifetime Certified Advanced Metrication Specialist
Senior Member, IEEE

http://www.cofc.edu/~frysingj
frysingerj@cofc.edu
j.frysinger@ieee.org

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