There are a couple I have in mind. Like many techies, I am a huge fan of RSS for content distribution and XMPP for federated communication.

The really niche one I like is S-expressions as a data format and configuration in place of json, yaml, toml, etc.

I am a big fan of Plaintext formats, although I wish markdown had a few more features like tables.

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[–] 19 points 2 years ago (10 children)

ISO 216 paper sizes work like this: https://www.printed.com/blog/paper-size-guide/

It's so fucking neat and intuitive! How is it not used more???

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  • [–] 50 points 2 years ago (3 children)

    sorry to tell you this bud...

    map of which countries use iso 216. guess which one just had to be different

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  • [–] 8 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 child)

    It's also worth noting that switching from ANSI to ISO 216 paper would not be a substantial physical undertaking, as the short-side of even-numbered ISO 216 paper (eg A2, A4, A6, etc) is narrower than for ANSI equivalents. And for the odd-numbered sizes, I've seen Tabloid-size printers in America which generously accommodate A3.

    For comparison, the standard "Letter" paper size (aka ANSI A) is 8.5 inches by 11 inches. (note: I'm sticking with American units because I hope Americans read this). Whereas the similar A4 paper size is 8.3 inches by 11.7 inches. Unless you have the rare, oddball printer which takes paper long-edge first, this means all domestic and small-business printers could start printing A4 today.

    In fact, for businesses with an excess stock of company-labeled #10 envelopes -- a common size of envelope, measuring 4.125 inches by 9.5 inches -- a sheet of A4 folded into thirds will still (just barely) fit. Although this would require precision folding, that's no problem for automated letter mailing systems. Note that the common #9 envelope (3.875 inches by 8.875 inches) used for return envelopes will not fit an A4 sheet folded in thirds. It would be advisable to switch entirely to A series paper and C series envelopes at the same time.

    Confusingly, North America has an A-series of envelopes, which bear no relation to the ISO 216 paper series. Fortunately, the overlap is only for the less-common A2, A6, and A7.

    TL;DR: bring reams of A4 to the USA and we can use it. And Tabloid-size printers often accept A3.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago (3 children)

    Presumably you could just buy that paper size? They're pretty similar sizes; printers all support both sizes. I've never had an issue printing a US Letter sized PDF (which I assume I have done).

    Kind of weird that you guys stick to US Letter when switching would be zero effort. I guess to be fair there aren't really any practical benefits either.

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  • [–] 4 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    I’ve literally never even seen A paper in America. Probably would have to special order it from another country

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