AW: [texhax] Hello - I have a problem

Robert Hunt reh10 at cam.ac.uk
Thu Aug 19 13:11:32 CEST 2004


>         By the way, I have it on good authority that the UK
>         still uses Imperial measure for their highway system
>         and for similar reasons.  Do they still sell ``pints''
>         in public houses?

I'm very reluctant to continue this flame war, but I thought I would
answer that, yes, the UK does indeed use Imperial measures for road
signs (speed limits etc) and (some) alcohol measures in pubs (pints
etc); but almost everything else is metric. In particular, we use A4
paper by default. But my main point is that the UK doesn't usually
consider itself to be "European", despite its membership of the EU.

It took ages for us to persuade Microsoft and other US companies to make
it easy to use A4 paper with their products, and the problem STILL
causes trouble today (witness the number of printers flashing the error
message "please load letter paper", holding up the entire queue).



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