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Comment by Mindwipe | Hacker News Reader

They will retain the current ratio, but both parties are in the wrong - 4:3 isn't the shape of a piece of paper, 1:√2 is.

The most mainstream tablet device to have had that ratio was Google's discontinued Pixel C, which was a fantastic device to read on because of it (granted, when the damned hardware worked).

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> 4:3 isn't the shape of a piece of paper, 1:√2 is.

US letter sized paper is 8.5 inches wide and 11 inches tall.

4/3 is 1.333....

11/8.5 is about 1.29.

It's not 4:3 exactly, but it's pretty close.

A4 and friends are of course not 4:3--and aren't arbitrarily sized.

Which paper size? Letter? A4?

A4, GP’s view of paper is only what’s native to GP apparently.

As already established by sibling comment to yours, 8.5 x 11 is very close to 4:3.

A4 is 297mm x 210mm which is very very close to √2.

A4 is the normal assumed standard office paper size for around 90% of the people on earth. I tend to see something printed on US Letter around once or twice a year and it's a weird novelty.

I would wager most (>50%) of the people on Earth don’t have regular access to a printer, nor regularly consume A4 printed goods. For them “paper size” would be whatever is common in the notebooks/journals sold in their country.

Leaving the percentages aside, lots of people use photocopiers without owning them. In countries like India, there are many photocopying shops that will make copies of anything for a very small fee. People use them to make copies of ID cards, certificates, bank statements and what not regularly. Anywhere some kind of documentation proof is required, photocopies are usually involved (electronic submission is still not as widespread).

Exactly the point I was making. I was not trying to imply US Letter is the “normal size” (if I did, then I’d be doing the same thing they ran afoul of).

Who are the 50%? I get your point but I think you might be making some odd assumptions, markedly underestimating how much a person in regional China, India or Indonesia interacts with paperwork. (You might also be forgetting just how cheap printers and paper are.)

> A4 is 297mm x 210mm which is very very close to √2.

It is √2 for the ability to cut paper for mass manufacturing: the difference between the official A4 measurements and a "true" sqrt(2) is 16µm (assuming the short side is the reference).

> the difference between the official A4 measurements and a "true" sqrt(2) is 16µm

Aka “very very” close. I didn’t feel the need to be so specific as defining the exact amount of closeness (despite knowing it), but thanks for sharing in case others were curious.

> Aka “very very” close.

No. AKA the same. When the precision of the cutting implements is lower than the difference between the spec and the idealised ratio you're there. 296.9848mm is not an actual paper dimension which makes any sense.

It (A4) has tolerances of 2mm on either side though so you can go as close to a √2 ratio as you want :) Not sure about the tolerances on letter paper.

The fact is has loose tolerances seems a bit non-sequitur, but thanks for sharing. In both cases, I was using the “standard” dimensions.

Loose is relative. I suspect a 2mm tolerance in office paper wasn't considered loose in 1921.

Is there a point you are trying to make? A4 is by definition the size I stated in my comment. The square root of 2 isn’t some universal “perfect size” around the globe for paper. Those who use A* might prefer it, but there is a lot of variation across the globe on what defines “paper” size as “normal”. There’s also folks who use the B* series of sizes for example.

The definition of A4 includes the tolerances. And the only reason it doesn't perfectly match the square root of two is rounding. It's not a non-sequitur to point out that 1/√2 is at the core of A4, not the particular millimeters you quoted.

Neither tsbinz nor sjwright was saying anything about whether 1/√2 is a "perfect size" or not.

The B* series is also 1/√2.

> only what’s native to GP^H^H the rest of the world outside North America

> the rest of the world

A4 is not a worldwide standard (even excepting NA) either, many countries have different. I wasn’t saying US Letter is a universal standard either, quite the opposite.

My point to be very explicitly clear:

there is no universal size of paper around the globe, so saying something isn’t “paper sized” is entirely irrelevant to anyone besides those who share your definition of the size of paper

> A4 is not a worldwide standard

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paper_size#/media/File:Prevale...

Read it again, it states over 100 sizes of paper. ;)

Read it again, the article literally states:

> the A and B series of ISO 216, which includes the commonly used A4 size, are the international standard used by almost every country.

A and B series are specific size classes for specific use cases, that there are a number of sizes either historical or completely outside these use cases doesn't make them "not […] worldwide standards".

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