Disputatio Vicipaediae:Fractiones decimales

Note that it hasn't been decided yet whether to use "," or "." to mark off the decimal possition. So that this page is actually wrong in what it says. Right now the policy is to let the user decide whether to use "," or "." .

The english version of the same rule originally said to use ". and not .". THis ambiguity is what originally brought about much of the discussion indicated on the links within the page. At length a consensus was never arrived at. Perhaps it would be worth bringing this issue up again. I think I personally have been swayed to support the . because of its use in programming languages.--Rafaelgarcia 17:26, 2 Aprilis 2008 (UTC)

I must say I thought we had decided to use the comma. But if you ask me where we decided this, I have no idea. Perhaps I'm mistaken.

[Later:] I think you're right, Rafael, we never decided. Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 18:36, 2 Aprilis 2008 (UTC)

Once everyone gets back from vacation, we should really try once again to decide whether to use "," or "." once and for all. Personally, after some time, I was won over by the fact that in programming languages the period is the preferred way and putting in commas instead is nonstandard and thus requires extra programming. If we choose the comma then our programming snippets would be using one system and the text on the same page would be using the other. Since latin has no standard, and everything else is equal, this really pushes me over to the ".".

Most of all I think we should be consistent, within a page and throughout and I think on this one point everyone should agree.--Rafaelgarcia 21:03, 8 Augusti 2008 (UTC)

consensus

Haec disputatio e Taberna extracta est 7 Ianuarii 2010

I've tried a few changes; these could of course be reversed, or more changes could be made. For these things, Neander seems to prefer reperio to invenio. One wonders about the decimal comma, &c. IacobusAmor 13:49, 6 Ianuarii 2010 (UTC)

We agreed, somewhere, a while back, to use "decimal commas". But thanks for several rapid improvements. Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 13:54, 6 Ianuarii 2010 (UTC)

Re: "we've agreed to use commas for the decimal "point"." My memory was that we were told that ISO allows either method, but programmers prefer the period, so that's generally best. Maybe different fields have different preferences. What do most asteroid-naming astronomers prefer? The English wiki uses the period, not the comma. IacobusAmor 13:57, 6 Ianuarii 2010 (UTC)

Sorry, you're right, we have never quite decided. Our style page Vicipaedia:De orthographia says 'In fractionibus decimalibus "," utere, non ".".' -- but refers to the disputatio page, on which Rafael's proposal of "." remains hanging. For heaven's sake let's agree on one form and, if necessary, change the style page! Does anyone now oppose the "." proposal? Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 14:08, 6 Ianuarii 2010 (UTC)

We SHOULD decide once and for all! The decimal period is simpler because then we need only one rule. Otherwise a different rule would have to apply for articles on programming. In the end, since, for sophisticated calculation, the numbers would into computers anyway all decimal commas would get converted into decimal periods. By leaving it as decimall periods you are saving someone the effort of converting.--24.183.186.151 14:46, 6 Ianuarii 2010 (UTC)

If we're voting, I vote for the period. IacobusAmor 15:24, 6 Ianuarii 2010 (UTC)

Well, no one objected to Rafael's proposal at the time. I think we can take it it's approved. Decimal point/period it is. Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 16:07, 6 Ianuarii 2010 (UTC)

The 22nd General Conference on Weights and Measures (2003) of the international organization BIPM (Bureau International des Poids et Mesures), declared that either the period (following English and other usage) or the comma (following French and other usage) may be used to separate integers from fractions, and that spaces must be used to separate numeric groupings. So dot or comma is really up to us :) --Robert.Baruch 17:15, 6 Ianuarii 2010 (UTC)

Additamentum post festum

Last time I checked up on this, the ISO rule was explained as follows:

• Decimal comma shall be used.
• However, in texts where the main language is English, decimal point, optionally may be used.

More precisely, I found the following exposition in it:Sistema Internazionale#Scrittura delle cifre, in itwiki (the Italian wikipedia):

l'SI usa la virgola come separatore tra i numeri interi e quelli decimali come in 24,51. Nel 2003 il CGPM ha concesso la possibilità di usare il punto nei testi in lingua inglese. (my boldface)

However, this seems to be an interpretation of the actual text. As presented here by the US Department of Commerce, on p. 42 it states:

Following the 22nd CGPM (2003, Resolution 10), the decimal marker “shall be either the point on the line or the comma on the line.” The decimal marker chosen should be that which is customary in the context concerned.

Now, this formulation is not adultered by US authorities:-); the official text uses the decimal comma in the examples (where the US edition uses the point), but the facts as stated on p. 44 are the same:

D’après la 22e Conférence générale (2003, Résolution 10), « le symbole du séparateur décimal pourra être le point sur la ligne ou la virgule sur la ligne ». Le séparateur décimal choisi sera celui qui est d’usage courant dans le contexte.

My conclusion so far, is that either indeed "customary in the context" refers to the traditions in various languages, which actually gets rather close to the itwiki interpretation; or the intention was that e.g. texts in computer science may follow other habits than those in e.g. demographics, irrespective of language, in which case the itwiki text ought to be modified.

I actually the same time checked numerous wikipediae for European languages, and found that almost all of them in their style manuals or similarly demanded comma, not point. The main exception was enwiki; but also some other British Islands wikis.

The optimal way to handle this IMHO is to use {{formatnum}} as much as possible. One advantage is that formatnums in tables may be copied wholesale to other wikis, and automatically adapt to the respective locale. Another advantage is, that if a wiki decides to change its style, just changing the formatnum locale will have immediate effect in many places at once. A third advantage is that spaces between groups of digits automatically are non-linebreaking. However, all formatnums seem not to be edited to reflect exactly the agreed consensi.

Examples of formatnum effects: {{formatnum:1234567.89}} in lawiki is exhibited as 1 234 567.89. In enwiki, fowiki, and scowiki you get 1,234,567.89; in cawiki, dawiki, dewiki, eswiki, itwiki, ndswiki, and rowiki 1.234.567,89; in frwiki, nowiki, and svwiki 1 234 567,89. Inter alia, itwiki disrecommends using dot instead of space for digit threegroup separation, although they call the use of the dot "acceptable"; but their formatnum inserts the dots.

Finally, the remaining question: How should the formatnum represent decimal separation? IMHO, if there is some clear recommendation from the Vatican, we should follow it (since this is the only state w3here Latin is an official language). This is what many other wikipedias did; which I think is a main reason for so many wikis recommending the decimal comma. If there is no clear Vatican recommendation, I think that the traditional and actually officially predominant usage of decimal comma should be chosen. Georgius B 20:49, 26 Februarii 2010 (UTC)