Template talk:Convert/Archive December 2009

Torque doesn't work as documented! No ft-lb
The tables in both Convert and Convert/list_of_units/torque specify ft-lb as a valid code for torque, but try and use that on either side and it fails utterly!
 * convert ft-lb
 * 200 ft-lb


 * convert Nm to ft-lb
 * 100 Nm

?? The actual conversion seems to be something else altogether: 100 Nm, and the undocumented "lb.ft" works: 200 lb.ft. It's hard to tell with 3,000 (!!) subpages of Convert, so accurate intelligible documentation is vital, thanks. -- Skierpage (talk) 05:03, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Okay, I have added Template:Convert/ft-lb to work as documented and show symbol "ft-lb" in the above examples. Thank you for reporting that. The undocumented "lb.ft" (with a period/dot) is typical of those middot (&amp;middot "&middot;") symbols, which some people prefer. For years in Wikipedia, there has been much debate about avoiding the use of hyphens in formulas, with some people even claiming that the keyboard keypad minus ("-") is not a "valid" minus sign, despite it's use on computer keyboards for 5 decades. It has become a debate with "typesetting purists" but if you ask "WWED" (What would Einstein do?), he would probably reply, "What would people with common sense do?" Einstein wrote his papers by hand, so the number of pixels in a minus-sign was not an issue. I don't mind having several templates to support the different styles, but I think most people also want to reduce the various 2,500 display-subtemplates, as outlined in the essay "WP:A plan to reduce Convert subtemplates". -Wikid77 (talk) 07:13, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

Style issues
I encountered two distinct style issues while reviewing one article (Northwest Orient Airlines Flight 421). The first was the problem of American vs. Commonwealth spelling. Because the article is about a incident in the United States, involving a US airline and (presumably) US citizens, Wikipedia style mandates American usage. In particular, kilometers should be spelled that way, not kilometres. Is there a fix for this?

The second problem is more general (that is, it applies on both sides of the Atlantic). When a unit is used as an adjective, it should be expressed in singular form. The particular example here was that the plane descended to the "7000 feet/foot altitude level." In this and analogous cases, the plural form "feet" that is provided by the template is something only an engineer would use. I do not see any easy fix for this, aside from telling people to convert only nouns and not adjectives. And that wouldn't work anyway, because my engineer friends don't know the difference. PKKloeppel (talk) 16:01, 5 December 2009 (UTC)


 * In the infobox I added "abbr=on". For the first example you need "sp=us" and the second "adj=on", see herre. By the way, "6.6 kilometers (4.1 mi) northwest of Winona, Minnesota, approximately 95 miles (153 km)" looks odd with the mix of miles and kilometres. Enter CambridgeBayWeather, waits for audience applause, not a sausage 16:34, 5 December 2009 (UTC)


 * I reversed the conversions to be miles-first "4.1 miles (6.6 km)" since the Netherlands-related source listed both km/miles. -Wikid77 13:15, 6 December 2009

Link to bhp not correct
This macro links bhp to a non-existent section: 195 kW. The correct link is Horsepower. Please correct! Thanks --Dwi Secundus (talk) 07:28, 5 December 2009 (UTC)
 * The subtemplate Convert/bhp has been fully-protected since July 2008, so I just changed the article "Horsepower" subheader back to "#Brake horsepower" and moved "(bhp)" into the next sentence. -Wikid77 13:15, 6 December 2009
 * That was the right move. Abbreviations/symbols in titles is poor style. There are others in the article which need fixing. J IM ptalk·cont 08:03, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

New Convert/date gives ISO date or day for: date
08-Nov-2009: The unit name "date" triggers the new (huge) subtemplate Convert/date to convert a date into ISO format or the day-of-the-year:
 * 8 November date      gives: 8 November date
 * Nov 19 date      gives: Nov 19 date
 * April 31 date      gives: April 31 date

That template was purposely designed (to be gigantic) to show that Wikipedia's MediaWiki preprocessor can handle at least 2,928 switch-branches in a single subtemplate, plus internal documentation and category-links. See page: Template:Convert/date. -Wikid77 10:31, 8 November 2009


 * Is is some sort of test template to show how switch monsters ain't so bad after all (they are by the way)? If so, would you consider moving it to your own userspace? I'm putting the suggestion to you on account of the fact that it's redundant to the parser function i.e. it's gotta go. J IM ptalk·cont 08:35, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

Supporting old conversions
06-Dec-09: Although the major units for Convert have been chosen to reflect the most-recent international standards for naming and unit-symbol codes, I believe that Convert should also handle older unit names, as well. For example, if several older sources had listed miles as "mls", then I wouldn't object to creating subtemplates to display that symbol as well as the typical "mi" symbol. However, I think we need to start linking each subtemplate, as time permits, to source documents which define the unit symbol as used, to avoid the appearance that Convert's unit names (or unit symbols) are being invented as original-research naming. An example would be the official designation of litre as either "L" or "l" (lower-case letter el), as defined on an SI webpage. Meanwhile, I plan to add the "royal cubit" as 524 mm, citing various sources:
 * 10.0 royal cubit  gives: 10.0 royal cubit
 * 523.5 mm    gives: 523.5 mm

However, I understand the need to support the standard modern-day units, as well. -Wikid77 13:15, 6 December 2009


 * Why would we create "mls"? The template is for use on Wikipedia not for use in old books. If we go about adopting whatever symbols/abbreviations we find in literature, WP will become an incomprehensible jumble. J IM ptalk·cont 08:58, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

Celsius-Fahrenheit conversion
Hello, I'm wondering how to convert the temperature accurately in this phrase for the 2008 Hungarian Grand Prix article:

"In addition, the high track temperature was to the Ferrari chassis's advantage, as it was easier on its tyres than the McLaren and was able to run them at an operating temperature of up to 10 C lower..."

The template converts the precise Fahrenheit temperature equivalent to 10 degrees Celsius, not how many degrees of Fahrenheit are in 10 degrees of Celsius.-- Midgrid  (talk)  17:47, 22 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Yes, I would say this template should not be used in that context, since you are talking about a temperature difference, not an absolute temperature. Plastikspork ―Œ (talk)  18:54, 22 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Is there an alternative template, or should I just do it manually?-- Midgrid  (talk)  19:06, 22 December 2009 (UTC)
 * As far as I can tell, manually is the way to go, unless you anticipate needing to use this quite frequently? Plastikspork ―Œ (talk) 19:10, 22 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Thanks for making the change - I didn't notice initially due to my own edits to the article. I don't think I'll be using it very often, so it shouldn't be a problem.--  Midgrid  (talk)  19:15, 22 December 2009 (UTC)

Use to give "10 C-change". J IM ptalk·cont 20:48, 22 December 2009 (UTC)


 * While editing Hydrography of Hungary I also noticed the "to" form for C to F does not seem to be implemented. e.g.


 * produces

30 to 40 °C


 * Am I doing something wrong or is it really not implemented? I worked round it using the template twice, but it is a little ugly. Si Trew (talk) 21:02, 22 December 2009 (UTC)


 * Afraid temperature ranges are still in the works. J IM ptalk·cont 21:12, 22 December 2009 (UTC)
 * → 10 C-change (the default precision is excessive and IMO it should be fixed, but as a workaround you can use .) ― A. di M. — 2nd Great Wikipedia Dramaout 12:37, 23 December 2009 (UTC)


 * A di M. I am not sure you have the point. If it is twenty to thirty degrees this is not physics but meterology. So we are not measuring temperature differentials here. Which is an equation anyway. I just wondered if I was doing something wrong, it appears that I was not, so happy with that answer. I reworded the sentence so it flowed while stiil leeping the CONVERT template, which I always use. It is not perfect but quite good,cos Jimp is PRETTYGOODMAN. Not super, but pretty good.

Happy christmas all of you, and may your god go with you Si Trew (talk) 23:24, 26 December 2009 (UTC)

Flow rate
Can we have flow rate please. Volume over time. In particular need cubic metres per second to cubic feet per second, for Hydrography of Hungary. I also need this to be able to specify a range. Again I worked round it by just using cubic metres and adding "per second" myself at the end, but of course it may be desirable to change e.g. cubic millimetres per month to cubic inches per year, or something like that. But all I need is cubic metres per second to cubic feet per second.

Best wishes Si Trew (talk) 21:01, 22 December 2009 (UTC)


 * Try (it gives "123 to 234 m3/s"). J IM ptalk·cont 21:10, 22 December 2009 (UTC)


 * Thanks Jimp I will try that. I did look honest to try to find it, and I tried m3/s, but I put the imperial wrongly. I will try it thanks very much. 23:29, 26 December 2009 (UTC)


 * Actually I was a bit unsure about which units to put for the imperial. I settled on cubic feet, but was veering towards cubic yards. In the UK I think we tend to measure water and its flow always in cubic feet I think, but I don't know about the US and elsewhere. Old water meters go in cubic feet but I think more modern ones go in cubic metres. (I don't have a meter here so can't do the obvious thing and go and check it. Gas is in cubic feet, or rather a therm, which is a cubic foot of gas, don't know if we do therms, British Thermal Units, and that opens another can of worms because it changed when we went from coal gas to north sea gas, which roughly speaking put twice as much energy in the same cubic foot.) Cubic feet seems the most natural to me, but would others think differently? The measures are approximations, they are not too exact, so I wondered if it was overprecise putting it in cubic feet. Si Trew (talk) 06:35, 27 December 2009 (UTC)


 * BTW I did check the doc before coming here, and could not find it in the doc. Si Trew (talk) 06:37, 27 December 2009 (UTC)


 * It works, thanks, it is great. I see my mistake, I was putting "sec" instead of "s", for seconds. Si Trew (talk) 06:48, 27 December 2009 (UTC)

Default conversion for pints
gives 10 imppt. Wouldn't it make more sense to use 10 imperial pints (5.7 l; 12 US fl pt)? Two reasons: 1) that way, the conversions look much more precise than they actually are (it's actually about 5683 ml or 192 US fl oz); 2) no-one would go in a pub in continental Europe and ask for five hundred millilitres of beer, or in one in the US for ten ounces of cider. ― A._di_M.2nd Dramaout (formerly Army1987) 13:25, 29 December 2009 (UTC)


 * Sound reasoning; I agree with this change. — Huntster (t @ c) 05:23, 30 December 2009 (UTC)

Use of "sqkm"
I have just typed "sqkm" for the umpteenth time, and been told, for the umpteenth time, that "undefined undefined no longer accepts sqkm as code. Please use km2 instead. Please refer to undefined undefined's talk page for the reasoning behind this. Sorry for any inconvenience."

Every time this happens I tut to myself "for goodness' sake, now that you've recognised 'sqkm', surely it's just as easy to use it as put out an error message?". So, I decided to follow the link to this talk page to find out the "reasoning". Unfortunately I don't see any mention of it. Does anyone have any idea why "sqkm" can't be accepted, or know where the reasoning is explained? 86.134.55.200 (talk) 23:25, 30 December 2009 (UTC).


 * Actually used to be, I'm not sure why it changed - happens to me too sometimes. I suppose it is more technically correct in that km² is the proper unit, but it's something that could (should?) probably be allowed for by using internal redirects. Orderinchaos 10:16, 31 December 2009 (UTC)


 * Okay, so there was a pseudo-discussion regarding this back in June 2008, which is also when the "sqkm" template was blocked from use. However, I didn't see any actual reason for this blockage other than "sqkm is bad" (paraphrasing of course) from Lightmouse. I'm going to institute a redirect from "sqkm" to "km2", which should allow for normal use. If a reasonable explanation can be given as to why this is a bad idea, I'll reverse myself. — Huntster (t @ c) 10:28, 31 December 2009 (UTC)


 * Redirect created, and seems to work fine: 25 sqkm --> 25 sqkm. — Huntster (t @ c) 10:30, 31 December 2009 (UTC)


 * Thanks! 81.129.130.165 (talk) 13:17, 31 December 2009 (UTC).
 * Yep, thanks for the prompt response to that :) Sensible solution all around I think. Orderinchaos 13:37, 31 December 2009 (UTC)