ossia.parameters units issue and proposal

[vincentgoudard]

ossia.parameter will spit out an error if one is using

• an unknown unit like T (tesla) or J (joule), etc.
• a compound of units like km/s

I guess the problem is twofold :

• recognizing yet unknown units (or at least no saying they are "wrong"), because they can be useful for other purpose than unit conversion, like documenting the GUI.
• the idea of dataspace as proposed in earlier Jamoma has some limitation because it declares a dataspace like "speed" which would be better described as m.s^-1, that is, a data space built on the 7 base units from the International System of Units. Then, this would allow to declare any unit as a product of such base units with appropriate exponents. Like : Tesla = kg⋅s^-2⋅A^-1

[vincentgoudard]

One more thought on this : there is a number of dimensions that do not have dimensions (ratios like angles, concentrations, artihmetic or geometric gains, etc.) while they do have units (radian for angles, dB for audio gain, m/m for elasticity, etc.) and those units are :

• worth being displayed
• not convertible to another dimensionless value : it does not make sense to convert a gain in dB to an angle (of course, mapping some angles to a filter gain in dB do make as much sense as mapping anything else)

FWIW, there is a list of such dimensionless quantities here : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_dimensionless_quantities

So the unit conversions mentionned in my previous message should probably implemented in parallel with the displayed units.