The use of a dot between the media name and dimensions is a human factors
trap. Maybe the concatenated self-describing media name is not intended
for human consumption but it will certainly be consumed by developers and,
in some cases, if the application or driver can't make heads or tails of
the associated alias or legacy information, it may just paste up the self
describing string in the UI.
The problem is that some alias names end in numerals. Example,
na-a2.4375-5750. It's too easy to trip and think 2.4375 is a dimension!
This can be easily corrected by moving the dimension "type" indicator
adjacent to the units, themselves. Example:
na-a2.4375-5750 would become a2-na-4375-5750.
Also, if we made this change, we would not be overloading the use of "na"
(and it's absence to mean metric). For example:
iso-a4.2100-2970 would become iso-a4-mm-2100-2979.
A better solution would be to define a complete structure... a standard
DTD for media, where the units would be specified in the DTD rather than
in a self describing name. I will address the need for a complete DTD in a
separate note.
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Harry Lewis
IBM Printing Systems
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