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Show HN: I created Units Converter that contains 5000 units across 78 categories

kodytools.com

61–70 of 137 posts

Re: Show HN: I created Units Converter that contains 5000 units across 78 categories

#61
It looks quite extensive, and should cover almost all practical cases.

The main limitation I see is that it seems you are limited to picking the units to convert between from predefined lists. If someone gave you say a volume specified in nmi ft^2 for instance and you wanted to convert it m^3 you'd have to do nmi to m and ft^2 to m^2 and then multiply the results to get nmi ft^2 to m^3 because nmi ft^2 is not on the volume unit list.

Those cases are probably pretty rare. It is not often that you run in to people who give you say a gasoline consumption rate of 23 picoacres or give you a cookie recipe that calls for 1.6 barn megaparsecs of vanilla. (BTW, those are 0.04 gal/mile and 1 tsp, respectively).

Re: Show HN: I created Units Converter that contains 5000 units across 78 categories

#62
I got into Qalculate! last year and I haven't found any units in my day to day work as an engineer that weren't built in. Unit conversion is good but the bundling of it with more of the math equation is the ultimate usability win for me.

https://qalculate.github.io/

Re: Show HN: I created Units Converter that contains 5000 units across 78 categories

#63
post #27

People interested in this should check out Frink. It has been around for a while and has thousands of unit conversions with explanations, as well as a web interface for the unit conversions part https://frinklang.org/ https://frinklang.org/frinkdata/units.txt https://frinklang.org/fsp/frink.fsp

Years ago, I started a project along those lines and collected a bunch of reference material about a lot of the various units. But, at some point, I had a working program but lost interest in entering all the information that would have needed to have been typed in. (This was long enough ago that there wasn't really an option to cut and paste a lot of it from online.)

Re: Show HN: I created Units Converter that contains 5000 units across 78 categories

#64

What's the reason to use this over GNU Units? https://www.gnu.org/software/units/

May be number of units and categories it supports. Plus I am adding more units.

I couldn't find a way of converting from US teaspoons to cubic light-seconds, which is my favorite demo of the GNU utility. Also, do you have a way of adding a time dimension to the conversions? E.g from kibibytes per day to megabits per second?

Re: Show HN: I created Units Converter that contains 5000 units across 78 categories

#65
post #3

Appreciate the effort you put into this. In terms of user flow, I typically need one or two of these use cases at a time. In that case, I just type my conversion into a search engine like Google, and often use their default box. Can you share what types of use cases you've seen people use KodyTools for?

I agree with you. There's clearly been a lot of work put into this but it's sooooo busy that I find it unpleasant to use.

For me, a different UI could fix the problem. Give me a field where I can ask directly "how many cups are in 4.37 cubic meters?"

As it stands now, I can get the answer from any search engine or voice assistant more quickly than from this site.

Re: Show HN: I created Units Converter that contains 5000 units across 78 categories

#69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

May be number of units and categories it supports. Plus I am adding more units.

I couldn't find a way of converting from US teaspoons to cubic light-seconds, which is my favorite demo of the GNU utility. Also, do you have a way of adding a time dimension to the conversions? E.g from kibibytes per day to megabits per second?

Are US teaspoons actually a different size to UK ones, or just the volume measurements?

Re: Show HN: I created Units Converter that contains 5000 units across 78 categories

#70

Ooh, this should be very useful when reading article written by American journalists.

Doubtful since those usually use vague analogies to stadiums, pickup trucks and guns.

And washing machines¹. And small boulders².

1. https://imgur.com/gallery/VI0B0nl>

2. https://twitter.com/SheriffAlert/status/1221881862244749315>

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