Xiaofan Chen wrote: > Still I see the wiki page (by no means should be considered as > correct) of ISO_31-0 at the following URL. > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_31-0 > the wavelength is =CE=BB =3D 6.982 =C3=97 10=E2=88=927 m >=20 > It is using dot and not a comma. Therefore I guess in the technical > field people are still using dot instead of comma. It's not about the technical field. In "dot countries", the decimal point is used in all sorts of documents (technical and otherwise); in "comma countries", the decimal comma is used likewise. In international information exchange, I think the more knowledgeable, flexible and/or courteous participant tends to use the standard of the partner. As far as I understand ISO 31-0, the comma is only required for /drawings= /. In other documents, the use of the dot is acknowledged. (In this sense, t= he Wikipedia entry above is perfectly standard-conform -- and since it's in English, it of course uses the dot.) IMO the most important thing to keep in mind from ISO 31-0 is to please not use commas or dots as thousand separators. This is a safe recipe for misunderstandings... non-breaking spaces are much better. > Maybe ISO-31's next revision will use dot when China, India, USA and > Japan pay more attention to the standards. ;-) I hope they start to do so. It's a pain for everybody who works across borders. But participating in the creation of international standards always also means working with them -- and in the creation of internation= al standards, no single country has a monopoly, so when working with them, every country has to give in every now and then. And that's hard for some. BTW, using a space instead of the comma (or the dot) as a thousand separator has been adopted by most reasonable national standards bodies, like the NIST http://www.physics.nist.gov/cuu/Units/checklist.html. What'= s missing is that somebody listens to them :) Gerhard --=20 http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive View/change your membership options at http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist