On Mon, 8 Mar 2004 at 20:08:38 in message
, Julian Scarfe
wrote:

The SI is equally happy with hPa or kPa. You've pulled out a standard from
ISO, I think, that is designed to help you make a choice when there is no
reason to do differently. I agree that, if there were no other factors
influencing choice of unit, multiples of 1000 are a good default. But
you've picked on a case where there *are* clearly good reasons -- the size
of the unit, and the equivalence to mbar -- that make hPa a very sensible
and pragmatic choice.

I know little about this but isn't there a case for making the format of
digits used specific to the function as far as possible?

Call 101 decimal 5; altimeter 1015; Heading 101; altitude 1 thousand 1
hundred for example?

Just a thought.
--
David CL Francis