A cool Unit converter.

"Grewal" wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@l53g2000cwa.googlegroups.com:

nitConverter.aspx

A few suggestions for user-friendliness:

1. allow plural of unit, e.g., "liter" or "liters"
2. allow variations of unit, e.g., "cubic centimeters", "cc", "ml", in addition to "cm^3"
3. format answer numbers with commas, e.g., 1,000,000 instead of 1000000

On 14 Feb 2007 07:58:57 -0800, "Grewal" put finger to keyboard and composed:

Type the following expressions into your Google search box:

1 gallon to litres 1 imperial gallon to litres 1 imperial gallon to gallon 1 cubits to hands 1 usd in pound sterling 1 usd in gbp 1 us dollar in british pounds 1 usd per gallon in euro per litre furlong per fortnight in cm/minute parsecs per year in kilometres/microsecond pound furlongs per fortnight squared in piconewtons speed of light in feet per nanosecond (speed of light)/(speed of sound) half a litre in teaspoons kilowatt second in btu gram times (speed of light squared) in gigawatt days

- Franc Zabkar

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Please remove one 'i' from my address when replying by email.

LOL! I needed a good laugh! Regards, Tom

Trust me, a lot many people other then you know that Google search box can be used as a unit converter. In addition, there are many other online tools available for the internet too. You appear to be a smart person who knows what they have put in for conversion and understands the output. Many like me, often get confused thinking if the conversion was infect what I intended to do; for example

- Was conversion done using pound as weight or pound as a mass?

- Did I really mean to use Canadian Gallon or U.K Gallon or imperial one, Btu international or Btu mean etc.? This is a small attempt to address these types of issues. Any conversion that you makes through this tool, provides you the definition of the unit being converted down to base SI units (See Conversion Type: ) and possibly a link to the reference information regarding the unit too! On the back end, I also want to create/ maintain a database of units that can act as a good source of reference for the users. Any body who wants to contribute, can help populating the database!

If the Google search box is sufficient to you, Good for you! I hope you made these comments after checking out the gadget!

Grewal

innews: snipped-for-privacy@l53g2000cwa.googlegroups.com:

Thanks for the input.

1. Usually, the recommendation is not to use plurals (see rule # 6
   formatting link
   . For certain common units like liter, I will add this.
2. I will also add the other variations as long as it does not cause conflicts in the naming (Example min for minute Or for micro inch etc.)
3. That is easy. I will get it done this weekend!

On 20 Feb 2007 06:53:37 -0800, "Grewal" put finger to keyboard and composed:

IME this Google feature is relatively unknown.

As for your conversion utility, my very first observation is that it is US-centric.

Try the following:

30 metre to ft 1 litre to pints

The following produce syntax errors:

1 tonne to pounds 1 tonne in pounds

These also produce errors:

1 btu to kwh 1 knot to mph

With respect, I think your converter has a long way to go before it can even come close to the utility of Google's.

- Franc Zabkar

--
Please remove one 'i' from my address when replying by email.

Thanks for your criticism, you sure brought up some good points. Even though I included English/imperial units in the program but I sure forgot to consider the different spellings used (So far I found only two, litre & metre!).

As I mentioned in the beginning of this thread, the website is still in the developing mode. All I have done so far is to create a mechanism by which unit addition/deletion or editing can be done easily without doing any re-coding under the hood. Then I picked bunch of most commonly used units (including English) and put it on the web to see the response from the community. The idea behind this is that If I can a good number of users hooked up, the unit database will be populated itself to become a more comprehensive resource.

Units can be added here

Regarding your queries below, most of them didn't work as I didn't include the unit name plurals it (A user earlier in the thread has already suggested it). So I updated the program to understand the plurals for commonly used units (I don't want all the unit plurals to be included as they reduce the effectiveness of auto complete feature.)

So all of following are now accepted by the program as good inputs.

30 metre to ft 1 litre to pints tonne to pounds 1 knot to mph

Following require some changes (auto complete feature helps rectifying it)

1 tonne in pounds => use " to " instead of " in " as I have reserved " in " as unit name for inch. This is just a syntax preference that I picked.

1 btu to kwh => use kWh instead. (W is the SI symbol for watt )

I don't disagree with this! I don't put this up against Google (I would be daydreaming otherwise) that is jack of all trade. Google search box is a Calculator, currency converter, unit converter, Permutation /combination solver ......... .and what not!

mine is just a simple converter created with an approach to simplify the conversion by instantly providing a reference to unit definition being used in conversion.

Even queries that you provided above contain at least two units with more then one definition. You may know what you intended to solve but many out there don't! Those folks are what I am looking for as user base for this gadget.

pint >> US dry pint, US liquid pint or Imperial pint ; pound >> pound troy or apothecary, or pound avoirdupois;

Grewal.