Paper sizes • Hacker News Board

Re: Paper sizes

#171

Post by glitch » Wed, Feb 11, 2015, 6:00 PM UTC

brudgers wrote: post #165

And what about US legal? Or Architectural Sizes? Nevermind folios (and quartos and ovtavos). It's a big diverse world with room for all sorts of paper applications. [Architectural Sizes]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paper_size#Architectural_sizes [folios]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folio_%28printing%29#Size [big diverse world]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paper_size#Other_sizes

It is a big, diverse world. And various, special use-cases are best addressed with different aspect ratios. But, to me, the point of ISO 216 adoption in place of US Letter (and other common sizes) is about having a general-purpose/common-use aspect ratio with inherent properties that help simplify things across the board for a lot of people. If it wasn't already used so much elsewhere, I'd be a "harder sell" (even to myself). But, it is used elsewhere... a lot... and has beneficial properties too. Trying to clean up the mess and simplify the chaos. Remove the unnecessary extra baggage associated with other systems.

Aside: If I was king of Sun III (previously known as Earth), my replacement for "US Legal" sized paper would be 210mm × 340mm. This maintains the width of A4, but gives it a length similar to that of US Legal. Moreover, it achieves this using the Golden Ratio. Calling it φA4 for the time being.

    US Legal..:  8.5”  × 14” (Before mm conversion.)
    US Legal..:  216mm × 356mm —> approx. 1.647:1 ratio

    A4........:  210mm × 297mm —> approx. 1.414:1 ratio
    φA4.......:  210mm × 340mm —> approx. 1.619:1 ratio

See http://i.imgur.com/S0rrRnP.png for an example.

Aside: Apparently the 210mm × 340mm size is used for some folded paper towels and some pastry bags already. Also, Mexico's "Government-Legal" is 216 mm × 340 mm — same height as my proposal but with a 6mm width difference. (Theirs matches US Letter/Legal width of 216mm instead of the A4 width of 210mm.)

Re: Paper sizes

#172

Post by state » Wed, Feb 11, 2015, 6:19 PM UTC

I have been keeping all of my notes on B5, while living in the US, for the past ten years for this exact reason. 8.5 x 11 is simply not an attractive shape.

Re: Paper sizes

#173

Post by eitally » Wed, Feb 11, 2015, 6:26 PM UTC

nawitus wrote: post #164

logfromblammo wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, you don't. You only need to learn separate spelling and pronunciation rules for each of the languages English has evolved or stolen from. The tough spellings usually come from Germanic roots via Old English and Middle English, whereas the French-Norman spellings are less difficult . Greek-Latin spellings are markedly less confusing when you learn the transliterations of the Greek alphabet. Of course Philadephia i…

>You really only need to learn rules derived from four dissimilar languages to spell and pronounce almost everything in English without having a word-specific association. Don't you also need to learn the language from which every word is derived from?

Absolutely not. You just teach kids the very obvious rules ("silent 'e'", "two vowels go walking, the first does the talking", "just memorize that sometimes 'gh' sounds like 'f'", ''i' before 'e' except after 'c' ... excepting obvious exceptions like 'science'", ...). With just a handful of heuristics and a modicum of rote memorization, children can figure out most English words with 0 background in any other languages. Besides this, pattern recognition is strong & easy -- tons of cognates and near-cognates, and most of the homophones & homonyms are common enough words that you'll learn them quickly regardless.

Re: Paper sizes

#174

Post by PythonicAlpha » Wed, Feb 11, 2015, 6:35 PM UTC

I know that there is a continuing fight between US measurements (inch, ...) and European measurements (Metric system) -- but I really was shocked, when a printer wanted to have "US letter" pages. The advantage of the A-System is so big over the US letter system, that I don't understand that there are still countries that don't want to adopt it. Just ask your photo copier manufacturer!

It also can't be reasoned, that so many cars or traffic signs have to be changed ...

Re: Paper sizes

#175

Post by 1_player » Wed, Feb 11, 2015, 6:38 PM UTC

logfromblammo wrote: post #155

ajuc wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

English is far from being streamlined. In fact it's the only language I know that requires you to learn how to pronounce EACH word. Most languages only require learning how each letter sounds, and maybe a few dozen di/trigraphs, the rest is regular. Not so in English.

No, you don't. You only need to learn separate spelling and pronunciation rules for each of the languages English has evolved or stolen from. The tough spellings usually come from Germanic roots via Old English and Middle English, whereas the French-Norman spellings are less difficult . Greek-Latin spellings are markedly less confusing when you learn the transliterations of the Greek alphabet. Of course Philadephia i…

I don't want to sound pedantic, but the correct pronunciation of "archaeopterix" is [ar-keh-o-pteh-riks]. Apparently the English Wikipedia page for it has the English-tainted pronounciation.

I spent 5 good minutes trying to find a way to transcribe in a way that an Anglosaxon would pronounce correctly, as Greek-Latin vowels have a unique sound while in English their sound depend on the letters before or after them and often are pronounced as diphtongs.

In Greek-Latin AE = E, always, and sounds like the "e" in "men".

Anyway, I'm no linguist.

Re: Paper sizes

#176

Post by logfromblammo » Wed, Feb 11, 2015, 6:43 PM UTC

nawitus wrote: post #164

logfromblammo wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, you don't. You only need to learn separate spelling and pronunciation rules for each of the languages English has evolved or stolen from. The tough spellings usually come from Germanic roots via Old English and Middle English, whereas the French-Norman spellings are less difficult . Greek-Latin spellings are markedly less confusing when you learn the transliterations of the Greek alphabet. Of course Philadephia i…

>You really only need to learn rules derived from four dissimilar languages to spell and pronounce almost everything in English without having a word-specific association. Don't you also need to learn the language from which every word is derived from?

No. The rules come from different languages, but once the word is considered an English word, only the orthography matters. If you make a new word by combining skip and hop into "skiphop", someone may mistakenly pronounce it [ski-fope] rather than [skip-hop], despite the fact that neither "ski" nor "phop" are identifiable as Greek roots, because phi makes an 'f' sound, and that makes the subsequent 'o' vowel pronounced as the 'o' in 'phobia'.

Knowing the etymology helps, but is not necessary. When linguistic researchers create nonce words for their experiments--words with no etymology at all, like "gluff" or "splim"--they find that people still generally pronounce them in the same ways.

They also find that people impute meanings to the nonce based on structures found in the word. For instance, when given the nonce words "plorkish" and "erildophate", and told that they are synonyms, subjects may claim that the latter is more sophisticated or scientifically precise. Or perhaps they are told to match the word to the person who spoke it, and a significant fraction of subjects match the words to the pictures the same way.

You can do the test yourself. Print out photos of Bill Nye and Kanye West. Write out "plorkish" and "erildophate" on index cards. Tell people the words are synonyms, and ask them to match the word to the photo of the person who said it. If they don't swing at least 60% in favor of West=plorkish and Nye=erildophate, and pronounce the words the same way, I will eat a tiny portion of my least favorite hat.

I claim bonus points if they also use them in a sentence or identify the part of speech as adjectives. Perhaps ask your subjects to also guess the sentence their chosen person spoke when using the word.

People do actually get paid to test this. This might be a good Science Fair project, actually.

Re: Paper sizes

#177

Post by rhino369 » Wed, Feb 11, 2015, 6:50 PM UTC

Symbiote wrote: post #167

rhino369 wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But they didn't change from a widely used system to another widely used system. They changed from no standardized system to ISO. North America already as system in place. Switching from one to the other confers very little, if any, benefit.

Ah, so America is special again? No, many countries had standard sizes before ISO/DIN. Britain changed from "Imperial" sizes: http://www.papersizes.org/old-imperial-sizes.htm France had these before 1967: http://www.paper-sizes.com/uncommon-paper-sizes/old-european...

America is special in that it is large enough to use their own standard.

It is the reason why the EU can create their own standards that nobody else follows. Like Rohs, the reason your electronics fail at a higher rate than previous electronics. Smaller economies suffer when they can't use/make their neighbors goods.

The North America a huge economy. We can efficiently have our own standard.

Uk and France aren't big enough to dictate their own paper size.

Re: Paper sizes

#178

Post by nawitus » Wed, Feb 11, 2015, 6:58 PM UTC

eitally wrote: post #173

nawitus wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>You really only need to learn rules derived from four dissimilar languages to spell and pronounce almost everything in English without having a word-specific association. Don't you also need to learn the language from which every word is derived from?

Absolutely not. You just teach kids the very obvious rules ("silent 'e'", "two vowels go walking, the first does the talking", "just memorize that sometimes 'gh' sounds like 'f'", ''i' before 'e' except after 'c' ... excepting obvious exceptions like 'science'", ...). With just a handful of heuristics and a modicum of rote memorization, children can figure out most English words with 0 background in any other languag…

>With just a handful of heuristics and a modicum of rote memorization, children can figure out most English words with 0 background in any other languages.

Most doesn't equal all.

>Besides this, pattern recognition is strong & easy -- tons of cognates and near-cognates, and most of the homophones & homonyms are common enough words that you'll learn them quickly regardless.

It's very difficult compared to a language system where the pronunciation can be directly inferred from the letters.

Re: Paper sizes

#179

Post by nawitus » Wed, Feb 11, 2015, 6:59 PM UTC

logfromblammo wrote: post #176

nawitus wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>You really only need to learn rules derived from four dissimilar languages to spell and pronounce almost everything in English without having a word-specific association. Don't you also need to learn the language from which every word is derived from?

No. The rules come from different languages, but once the word is considered an English word, only the orthography matters. If you make a new word by combining skip and hop into "skiphop", someone may mistakenly pronounce it [ski-fope] rather than [skip-hop], despite the fact that neither "ski" nor "phop" are identifiable as Greek roots, because phi makes an 'f' sound, and that makes the subsequent 'o' vowel pronounc…

>Knowing the etymology helps, but is not necessary.

Well, often it's necessary to either memorize a pronunciation or know the etymology, because often people pronounce English incorrectly.

Re: Paper sizes

#180

Post by mark-r » Wed, Feb 11, 2015, 7:30 PM UTC

glitch wrote: post #133

todd8 wrote: post #85

I enjoy working with paper. My favorite notebooks are ISO A4 size because they give me a bit more vertical room and still fit well in my backpacks. The issues that come up with regard to US Letter size paper seem to be: 1) It's not metric -- yes that's true, but A4 is 210mm x 297mm. These numbers seem completely arbitrary and don't take advantage of the metric system. I wish the US was on the metric system, but it's…

> 3) [...] the ANSI paper sizes simply have two aspect ratios alternating as one increases paper size. In relatively big jumps (of the same proportion), though. Not enough in-between sizes (of the same proportion).

So for example you'd be happy if there were a 6"x7.75" and 12"x15.5"?