Unit Conversion

The 'unit' pop-up list at the top of the screen gives access to conversions between different units. The units are grouped into categories. The units and categories are taken from a memo called 'units' in the 'PawCalc' Memo Pad category. The files "units1.txt", "units2.txt", "units3.txt", and "units4.txt" contain predefined unit conversions, or you can write your own list.

The "units1.txt" file contains the following categories: Angle, Area, Energy, Length, Power, Pressure, Speed, Temperature, Time & Frequency, Volume, and Weight & Force. The "units2.txt" file contains conversions for clothes sizes. The "units3.txt" file contains miscellaneous units. The "units4.txt" file contains currency exchange rates.

Please note that clothes sizes are anything but scientific: Each clothes brand is different in size, and a manufacturer might even mark a women's dress a size or two too small. Therefore, the clothes size conversions should be considered approximations at best.

You can get up-to-date currency exchange rates here. The rates are from the European Central Bank.

The unit memo starts with the 'units' keyword followed by a one-word name for the units. Then follows one or more unit categories. Each unit category starts with the name of category in quotes. Then comes the name of the base unit followed by a series of semicolon-terminated lines. Each line contains the name of a unit, a colon, conversion expression TO base unit, a semicolon, conversion expression FROM base unit, and finally a semicolon. In the conversion expressions you can use 'x' as a placeholder for the unit you are converting from.

Note: Regardless of PawCalc number format setting, the numbers in the unit memo must use a dot as decimal separator and comma thousand separator.

In each unit category, a base unit is chosen. All units are converted to and from the base unit. For example, the base unit for weight is kilograms. So, to convert from 5000 grams (g) to pounds (lb), we first convert 5000 g to 5 kg and then convert the 5 kg to (approx.) 11.02 pounds.