Am 11.09.2010 um 11:33 schrieb Hans Hagen:
Will siunits module be used as a base for this or will this be something completely new?
I don't know what you mean with siunits. Wolfgangs module? We have unit support in context for along time (also as part of some mathml extensions). So, we're more talking of an upgrade of the current module (units and digits) and I will have a look at Wolfgangs code to see what additional support is in there and we can merge things if needed.
He’s talking about my module. The difference between our modules is that your use “10 \Meter \Per \Second” for the input while i use ”\siunit{10\meter\per\second}”. There is nothing wrong about two modules with the same function as long as both do not cause a problem for the module (and i took care of this in my module). Parts like the number parsing can become part of the core and you provide a function which others can use to integrate it in their own macros.
The fundamentals of units are not going to change much, apart from the fact that we can now parse m/s if needed instead of using the verbose names).
I’m not a friend of the ”m/s” input because you can’t say where a units starts/ends without adding separators between them, here is a example from latex’s siunitx package which supports both methods but although the first is shorter we should rely on the tex method - si{kg.m/s^2} - si{\kilo\gram\metre\per\square\second}
Keep in mind that the units module runs on top of synonyms so that one can ask for lists of used units and meanings of them.
Adding this function is no problem, synonyms can also be integrated in any other system. Wolfgang