FS#43712 - [pacman] improper rate units shown for progress bar

Attached to Project: Pacman
Opened by James (thx1138) - Thursday, 05 February 2015, 20:58 GMT
Last edited by Allan McRae (Allan) - Friday, 06 February 2015, 00:10 GMT
Task Type Bug Report
Category Packages: Core
Status Closed
Assigned To No-one
Architecture All
Severity Low
Priority Normal
Reported Version
Due in Version Undecided
Due Date Undecided
Percent Complete 100%
Votes 0
Private No

Details

pacman shows a default progress bar when synchronizing package databases and when retrieving packages with rate units of "Kelvins per second", "K/s". Since, apparently, someone is not aware, "Kelvin" is a unit of absolute temperature, with the standard unit abbreviation "K".

In practice my computer system does _not_ actually change temperature at the rate indicated by pacman. Sometimes, the rate is also shown as "M/s", perhaps referring to a rate of candy-covered chocolates - I am not sure. Certainly, my computer system does _not_ actually produce candy-covered chocolates at this rate.

Most likely, pacman was meant to show download rates in one of several possible communication-rate units:
1) kilo-bits per second - kb/s
2) kilo-bytes per second - kB/s
3) kilo-binary bits per second - kib/s
4) kilo-binary bytes per second - kiB/s

and higher possible communication-rate units:
5) mega-bits per second - Mb/s
6) mega-bytes per second - MB/s
7) mega-binary bits per second - Mib/s
8) mega-binary bytes per second - MiB/s

Please choose some specific communication-rate units for the pacman progress bar and disclose these units in standard form on the progress bar display.

Similarly, pacman shows, presumably, a file size specification to the left of the progress bar in some "strange" units, possibly "Kelvin-binary", though I cannot imagine what these might be. Probably pacman was meant to display "kilo-binary bytes", "kiB". If that is so, please disclose the file size units in standard form, consistent with the larger units sometimes also shown, "mega-binary bytes", "MiB".

To summarize, a) capitalization matters, b) "kilo" and "kilo-binary" are not the same, at a ratio of 1000:1024, and c) "bits" and "bytes" are different, by a factor of 8.
This task depends upon

Closed by  Allan McRae (Allan)
Friday, 06 February 2015, 00:10 GMT
Reason for closing:  Won't fix
Comment by Allan McRae (Allan) - Friday, 06 February 2015, 00:03 GMT
KiB is perfectly fine.... it is a kibibyte.
Comment by Dave Reisner (falconindy) - Friday, 06 February 2015, 00:06 GMT
The OP is whinging about the rates and not the raw sizes, we which we do truncate to K, or M, or G. IIRC, Dan and I discussed this and concluded that it was better to save a few chars for the sake of 80 column terminals.
Comment by Allan McRae (Allan) - Friday, 06 February 2015, 00:09 GMT
He is commenting on both - read the full report!

I agree that we are not expanding the rate display. It is clear enough given the units in full on the same line as it.

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