[pdftex] typo in manual?

[Prof Brian Ripley]

If people want 'scaled second' to be the definition of a unit (and 
that is how I read the manual), then English conventions are that you 
quote it (as I did) to remove the ambiguity that 'scaled' is used as 
an adjective qualifying 'seconds'.

On Thu, 29 Jul 2010, André Bellaïche wrote:

>
> Le 29 juil. 2010 à 08:51, Paul Isambert a écrit :
>
>> Selon Will Robertson <wspr81 at gmail.com>:
>>
>>> On 29/07/2010, at 3:49 PM, Akira Kakuto wrote:
>>>
>>>>> In the pdftex manual:
>>>>>
>>>>>> \pdfelapsedtime (read--only integer)
>>>>>> The command expands to a number that represents the time elapsed from the
>>> moment of run start. The elapsed time is returned in scaled seconds: that
>>> means seconds divided by 65536, e.g. pdfTEX has run for 949194 scaled seconds
>>> when this paragraph was typeset.
>>>>
>>>>> Should that "divided" actually be "multiplied" ?
>>>>
>>>> I think it explains the unit "scaled second".
>>>
>>> scaled seconds = seconds * 65536
>>>
>>> Right?
>>
>> No: scaled seconds = seconds/65536, otherwise it would have taken ages to
>> typeset the paragraph. Here it has taken only 14.48 seconds. Note by the way
>> that 65536 is also the number of scaled points in a point. Now I'll have an
>> headache this early in the morning...
>>
>>
>> Best,
>> Paul
>>
>
>
> 1 scaled second = 1 second/65536
>
> So, for some elapsed time
>
> number of scaled seconds  = number of seconds * 65536
>
> Saying
>>> scaled seconds = seconds * 65536
> is very ambiguous
>
> André
>
>
>

-- 
Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
Professor of Applied Statistics,  http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
University of Oxford,             Tel:  +44 1865 272861 (self)
1 South Parks Road,                     +44 1865 272866 (PA)
Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595