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Comment by jcynix | Hacker News Reader

The international paper size standard is ISO 216. It is based on the German DIN 476 standard for paper sizes. This standard was designed by the German engineer and mathematician Walter Porstmann in 1922.

Cf https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Porstmann

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The ISO will charge you 58 CHF (equivalent to 59 USD) to read the standard.

https://www.iso.org/standard/36631.html

I can't help but feel a perverse pleasure that the US refuses to switch.

If only the US didn't use C because it costs 198 CHF to read the standard.

I pity the fool still programming in ANSI C

And ANSI will charge you $68 [1] to read the US paper sizes standard [2].

[1] https://webstore.ansi.org/Standards/ASME/ASMEY142020

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ANSI/ASME_Y14.1

Pfft, have you tried accessing any standard here? (ASME, IEEE, etc.)

That perverse pleasure must be masochism.

To be fair, charging for standards like these is pretty silly when the goal should be to have them adopted as widely and correctly as possible. Standards organizations need funding but as something that benefits pretty much everyone there is no reason not to fund them from taxes. Doubly so with digital distribution where the marginal cost of someone viewing a standard is ~0.

And it seems like pocket change too. How many companies are going to pay to access a standard? Thousands? Still not a lot of money.

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