internetarchive / internetarchive/openlibrary

Selected unit should only affect display, not saved data. Data should be stored in standardized, convertable size instead.

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#7,082 0 comments 1 reaction 0 assignees View on GitHub
Lead: @seabelis Needs: Triage Type: Feature Request
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Python
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Description

At the moment, Open Library has different units for saving the measurements of a book: inches and cm for size, g and ounces for weight.

Those measurements are stored directly into the book record, so if I enter a value as "inches", I will only ever get the book's size in inches. This is inconvenient for users who use another measurement system.

Instead of hard storing a specific size units, all measures should be stored in standardized manner (i. e. micrometer for size, microgram for weight) and converted only for display purposes. So, a 6 inch / 15.24 cm book would be stored as 152400 micrometer and could be displayed as either (or any other) format, depending on user choice. This would also make it easier to integrate non-western measurements if those ever become necessary.

### Describe the problem that you'd like solved
Weight and size units should be chosen by the user, not the database entry.

### Proposal & Constraints

Many old forum software from the 2000s had an entry where I could choose time format, starting day of the week, formal / informal addressing. I assume something similar could be implemented for Open Library.

The selected unit for storage needs to be small enough to convert to most common measurement units.

### Additional context
#2587
#2242

### Stakeholders

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