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I’m constantly converting between US units and Metric units while reading BPL forum posts, linked scientific articles, and some stories. I know the stories should show both units, but that’s not always true in practice.
Interactive widgets for conversion back and forth between these units would be helpful:
– Celsius – Fahrenheit
– millimeters – inches
– centimeters – inches
– meters – feet
– kilomaters – miles
– meters per second – miles per hour
– square centimeters – square inches
– square meters – square feet
– hectares – acres
– hectares – square miles
– milliliters – ounces (volume)
– liters – quarts
– liters – cubic inches
– cubic feet per minute (CFM) – liters per minute? cubic meters per minute?
– grams – ounces (mass)
– kilograms – pounds
– RSSI – R-value
– British Thermal Units (BTU) – kilojoules
– BTU/hour – watts
– [fabric air permeability something to something – I’m lost]
– [same for hydraulic head]
– milliamps at 3.7 volts – milliwatt-hours or watt-hours (common battery units, not metric-US)If active calculators embedded in many pages are too hard, maybe a link to a conversion page from all forum and story pages?
BPL members could suggest other conversions in this thread.
Yes, I know that Google can handle many of these conversion, but not all, and not always in a way that’s friendly to BPL users. And some people try to avoid using Google.
Thanks.
— Rex
“And some people try to avoid using Google.”
I’m one of them, so I’ve set DuckDuckGo as my search engine of choice. When I highlight a word and bring up a contextual menu, my option for searching is with DuckDuckGo. Pretty easy.
More to the point of your post, there’s a program for the Mac called Liquid Flow. Wonderful program that does all sorts of conversions. It can reside in your menu bar for easy access, and of course you can set a hotkey(s) to bring it up, so you can do the conversions without having to open a new window in your browser.
This would be a pretty cool site feature. Make it sort of a pop-up UI that overlays the screen a bit like the menu or clicking on your user name. Put the link in the expando menu, so it doesn’t consume any real estate when not in use.
Clo to R value is the one that always trips me up.
Hmm – an alternative implementation might be adding click or hover behavior to unit indicators (e.g. ‘mm’, or ‘osy’) that provide a conversion table. This would be embedded in the post, much like the embedded ad links.
Note the confusion and partial resolution of fabric air permeability unit conversions here:
https://backpackinglight.com/forums/topic/air-permeability-converting-cfm-to-cc/
— Rex
Was about to request this (plus the reverse) as some other social media websites will have a bot to convert. Could gain more international viewers.
I open another tab on my browser, type in “-25F in C”, and it pops out the answer.
I hate the convertor bot on reddit.
David: “If I hike over 10 miles / 16 km, I want shoes with more cushioning.”
Convertor bot: “10 miles is 16.0934 kilometers”How is that helpful? And its grasp of significant figures is appalling.
I keep bumping up against scanned schizoid Forest Service maps, which seemingly jump from metric to “customary units” every other sheet. Jimmy Carter almost got it done.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metrication_in_the_United_States
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