Error found in BS 5775-0:1993
Markus Kuhn
To my great horror I have just noticed that you use the incorrect unit
symbol "Kg" for kilogram (correct: "kg") in the EXAMPLES section on the
right column of page 4 of BS 5775-0:1993, which you claim to be
identical to ISO 31-0:1992. This is of concern, because it is the very
purpose of this standard to define what the correct standard symbols for
SI units such as kilogram are. This error is certainly not present in
the original ISO 31-0:1992 document distributed by ISO in their
"Quantities and units" handbook, and it is hard to believe that you have
not managed to fix it in the past fifteen (15) years since you published
this document.
The more general question is: do you really have to reformat perfectly
correct original ISO standards? This reformatting not only seems to add
occasionaly rather horrifying mistakes like the above to the original
international standard. It also gives the (usually rather neatly
prepared and typeset) ISO standards a in my opinion a substantially less
pleasant font and layout (e.g., far too little vertical space around
headings to be comfortably readable).
I think you are doing a great disservice to the standards community by
reformatting ISO standards this way. In the interest of both document
integrity and readability, I would very much appreciate if you did not
reformat ISO standards, but simply published them exactly in the form in
which the ISO has approved and published them originally. In other
words, sell their PDF files rather than prepare your own. This might
even save some cost, because you no longer have to employ people to add
such errors to existing approved standards.
Anyway, asking 102 pounds for a 17-page document (six (6) pounds
sterling per page!) that is so badly prepared and corrupted seems hardly
a convincing business strategy, especially considering that this
particular document is mostly text taken from freely available
publications by international scientific organizations such as BIPM,
CGPM, IUPAP, IUPAC.
Markus
--
Markus Kuhn, Computer Laboratory, University of Cambridge
http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/ || CB3 0FD, Great Britain