The current units approach is a good step but won't be maintainable in the long run. Instead, we need something which cleanly separates the nomenclature harmonization with the unit conversions themselves.
The harmonization should be something like the dictionary we have now, but only converts alternative name forms to the standard names. The current implementation where we keep the original and a normalized form is fine.
The conversion should use a library - we can let others do some work for us. pint has been used in LCA software in the past, and seems reasonable, but there are alternatives.
I agree that we don't need to support unit conversions across dimensions for now.
The current units approach is a good step but won't be maintainable in the long run. Instead, we need something which cleanly separates the nomenclature harmonization with the unit conversions themselves.
The harmonization should be something like the dictionary we have now, but only converts alternative name forms to the standard names. The current implementation where we keep the original and a normalized form is fine.
The conversion should use a library - we can let others do some work for us. pint has been used in LCA software in the past, and seems reasonable, but there are alternatives.
I agree that we don't need to support unit conversions across dimensions for now.