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The ISO 216 "A4" paper system is broken (rounding errors) [video]

Posted by fsckboy |an hour ago |1 comments

fsckboy an hour ago

spoiler alert:

the standard mandates that all dimensions (note particularly those calculated with 1.4142... sqrt 2)) be rounded to the millimeter. in the smaller sizes this error becomes significant and affects both linear dimensions and aspect ratios

the standard also has mfring tolerances allowing errors on the order of millimeters