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A collection of some classic Lemmy memes for your enjoyment
The A standard is not as perfect as you might think. Because the paper manufacturers round that perfect root 2 down to a whole integer in size every time, there is accumulated error in every size.
You might not notice a millimeter or two on an A1, but as the size of the paper gets smaller, the error gets bigger because of the rounding.
It really doesn't matter in practice. Important part is that you can fold A4 into A5
I do not have time to get into the video so i'm sorry if this is mentioned, but do printers have an error margin to deal with this?
I wonder what it would take to make paper with more precise measurements, say to the nearest 100 micrometres.
My day is ruined
I would certainly hope so. I was personally crushed to find out that that it wasn't as perfect as people seem to blindly think.
I'll always upvote Matt Parker
And before you ask, of course there's an easy system for various sizes that all relate to each other.
What did you think? That we hadn't thought this through?
I am so glad I use open street map and other projects which use it such as Organic Maps. Truly a godsend
Fun fact: ISO paper sizes are a transposition of German DIN (Deutsches Institut für Normung) sizes.
The German's obsession for standards is their main usefulness to humanity.
I dunno... I feel like I've dealt with enough German machinery and bureaucracy for 3 lifetimes.
Their "obsession" for standards is only for the standard of making everything 10 times more complicated than it needs to be.
Fun fact, there is a standard butt & a standard shit accoding to the DIN.
Damn, that Mercator projection making A4 look almost as big as Greenland...
Remember Africa is about three times larger than Canada
Pretty insane to consider that sort of scale, this projection really distorts reality
I never understood why we use ISO guidelines for everything in Chile, metric system and so on... except for paper sizes 🤦♂️
I think this is a little bit outdated at least for the Philippines. Goverment documents now primarily use A4 to comply with ISO standards. Some places such as schools may sometimes use the letter size (commonly referred to as short size here) but A4 is now much more common.
It's getting to be outdated for the US too - while the size is still around, it's getting pretty rare outside of direct consumer sales. I've written several systems that have generated tens of millions of letters for various official communications, and all of the government direct-mailing systems have used A-series paper (or US legal - as far as I'm aware there's no ISO equivalent to US legal?).
A4 is the closest thing to US Letter. I don't think there is anything close to US Legal (aspect ratio is all wrong). I've never received a single A-sized government letter, but I would love to be pleasantly surprised someday.
I mean... Do you regularly measure your mail? I'm sure there's still printers out there that run on letter, but they're becoming far less common. Perhaps your region is the holdout.
You're right, of course. I don't, but next time I will. I grew up with A4 and can usually tell from the aspect ratio by eye, but yeah I'm not paper size Rainman either, so it's possible I've never noticed.
Oh, let's also remember that A4 is a member of beautiful variant of an "SI system for paper". Want a paper the size of an A4 folded double? We have A~~8~~5. Want something that folds perfectly to A4? A3. One more fold? A2.
Edit: Did a fat-fingering
Not a meme; I am an American and I think this would be the exact right kind of petty bullshit to respond with, please push for this, Canadians. It is exactly this kind of petty, stupid bullshit that Trump participates in and responds most to.
I'm American and have worked in corporate offices all my life and grew up around the printing industry.
A4/SI is super common here too. "Letter" is just something used by home users. But very often A4 is sold as "Letter A4" right next to the other paper.
Now "legal" print format is a true abomination and unfortunately is much less likely to be easily replaced.