Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with standards

Printer for fashion company

ChloeMills — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 10:35:20 -0800

Need help figuring out best option for a printer for a fashion company. We currently use the basic Epson Large Format printers that cost between $300 - $500. However we keep having to replace them every year or so. I guess they have sponges that fill up and then you need get them professionally replaced.

I know at past companies we had one with replaceable sponges. However those seem to cost a lot more. How long are those meant to last. Does anyone have good suggestions for ones to use.

I'd say on average we print 30 pages a day, but during busy times it could be more than 100.

I don't know if laser, inkjet or dye printer is best.
We mostly printer on Matte Photo paper, plain copy paper and occasionally card stock. We rarely if ever print on Glossy photo paper.

Important factors for us:
-Longevity. It needs to last long a long time. It's a long and frustrating process when we have to buy new printers because we have to rematch all our color standards which takes a long time.
-Wide range of color. It's important that we can get a pretty wide range of color to match our fabric color standards.
-Color consistency is very important for the same reasons
-Cost - in the past we spent $400 on printers - so I have to show that a more expensive printer will be cost efficient.
-Switching paper - ease. We are constantly switching the size and type of paper we use. So that has to be fairly easy.

Any pointers, suggestions are greatly appreciated. I really don't know what our best option would be!

I need a crash course in the current best-practice website accessablity standards.

anastasiav — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 06:42:45 -0800

Give me a crash course in making our nonprofit website accessible. What are the best practices/standards? What's the lingo? I'm not building the site, but I have a meeting with the developers who are, today. They are doing this pro-bono for us (we're a community nonprofit with a goodly number of disabled users). Its important to our CEO that the website be accessible, but she hired me because she doesn't really understand the web.

I get the web fine, but I've never had to deal with this particular issue before. My first meeting with the developer is this afternoon. Help me talk with them about this issue and not sound like a N00b!

Naming convention for image files?

pleasantries — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 10:54:30 -0800

links to standards to naming scans (tiffs and jpgs) of slide images for artist's work? I about to start an extensive slide scanning project and I want examples of naming conventions used at other institutions. The name of each jpeg should include artist's name and the date of artwork.

Jazz standards for kids to sing

argybarg — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 12:26:57 -0800

What jazz standards could kids sing and enjoy? I'll start teaching music at an elementary school soon. Very few collections of music for kids to sing include anything from the jazz tradition. But I want kids to swing!

Here's what 4th and 5th graders can't handle:

-- Anything profoundly tricky, with lots of key shifts. So there goes "Lush Life."
-- Looooove. The kids are absolutely allergic to love songs, especially anything tender and heartfelt with kissing in it. So there goes "My One and Only Love," along with 90% of the jazz repertoire. Something indirect like "All of Me" might do.
-- Innuendo. I would, for instance, love "Flat-Foot Floogie With the Floy-Floy" if it didn't mean "the flat-footed slut with V.D."

So far I have "Java Jive," "Paper Moon" and "Summertime." Anything else?

European railway carriage markings

acb — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 15:55:24 -0800

What do the markings on European railway carriages (example here) mean? I'm guessing that the grid of 1-2 letter codes is probably a list of countries on whose national railways the carriage is certified/approved to operate, and the voltages are those with which it needs to be supplied from the locomotive. But what is the 200? The 'RIC'? The anchor? The loudspeaker symbol? And who coordinates the standard to which these markings are written? (I've only seen them in continental Europe, but also on Russian and Belarussian carriages in Berlin; is it an EU thing?)

ISO, W3C, OOXML/ODF: How do tech standards impact you?

trcook — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 00:17:06 -0800

What's your stake in international tech standards and OOXML?(I'm working up a thesis and I could use some input from the computer literate world) Ok, so I'm getting set to do my masters thesis in Public Administration, and I've decided to write about the wonderful world of international standardization-- mostly ICT(read: tech) standards (eg. HTML5, CSS3, domain naming/registering rules via ICANN, OOXML, ODF, PDF, anything from IEC ISO IEEE JTC1, etc.)

One area that I am exploring is output legitimacy in the standardization process. I have a pretty good theory, but I need some ideas about where to investigate for evidence...

This is where you come in. If you feel inclined, shout out about any of the following:
Why are standards important(to you)?

How have ICT standards impacted you/your job?

Are there International standards you have resisted implementing at your job or on a project? why?

Any first-hand accounts of political manipulation of the standards development process.

What's your take on the OOXML/ODF controversy? How will it impact you/your work? What long-term effects do you think the controversy will be?

Much thanks all,
Tom

Greenwich, Zulu & UTC: What's the difference?

cwarmy — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 21:08:27 -0800

What is the difference between Greenwich time, Zulu and UTC? Is Zulu and UTC a form of Greenwich time? I can't seem to find a page that states the difference. And do these forms of measurement not recognize daylight savings? Thanks in advance!

Standards make all the difference--right?

verevi — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 18:22:32 -0800

I'm seeking an example of how standardization on something has had a major impact to the world. Basically, because X became a standard, we now have Y. (Where X is something that was non-standard and Y is something better than what existed before X became a standard). I thought the standardization of screw threading might be a good one, but the wikipedia page makes it seem like it was a more gradual process (with various standards being made throughout time). Any better examples for my presentation? Ideally the example would be something that most people could understand and appreciate.

How do I convince my company to utilize Web standards?

relucent — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 10:17:39 -0800

Help me make a business case for HTML/CSS standards in my company's web-based software. I work at a software company. One of our flagship products is a web-based content management system, and there are many parts of the program where you can create documents in a WYSIWIG format, and later export this content as an HTML file. This is a huge selling point for our product.

I've been coding HTML since I was 12, and have been very much into standards-compliant XHTML and CSS for the past five years. So it greatly pains me to see that our application generates HTML like it's 1996. Visually, it looks terrible, and programmatically, it uses no style sheets and it is an absolute nightmare to look at the source when it's exported. We have had a number of issues reported by our clients with this, but our development department patches them up on a case-by-case basis instead of fixing the root problem, which is the horribly-formed code. Every time, it's the code.

I am not a developer, otherwise I would have fixed it myself over the course of a few weekends. But I want to make a case to our development VP that we need to utilize standards-compliant HTML and CSS whenever we deal with the WYSIWIG documents. It will take a lot of work because we've built up this Jenga tower pretty high, but if we do it right then life will be much easier in the future. This would be overdelivering on our big promises, as Seth Godin recommends, and it would show that we care about the customer even when it doesn't put dollars directly into our pockets.

The problem is, I can't think of a concrete case from a business perspective. It just feels wrong to me for our software to be writing HTML this badly. But it's hard to evangelize the good news of HTML standards when you can't think of any solid reasons. They think it's better to just band-aid the issues one at a time as they arise.

BTW, we develop software for a very specific industry, and it is not available to the public, so accessibility is not an issue. I know that's one of the main benefits for Web standards, but it's of very low consequence for us.

Also, I would still be pacified if our HTML and CSS didn't pass the validator 100%, but right now I have a feeling that if we ran it through the validator we'd take down W3C's servers. Really what I care about is that it is easy to work with, works cross-platform, and looks nice for our clients, and so I figure we might as well follow a few standards while we're at it.

Am I way too hung up on this, and I just need to get over it and let them do their thing their way? Or do I have a good reason to push for us using Web standards in our development?

Aim for the stars, then whatever you achieve you can feel like a failure.

Anonymous — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 06:28:04 -0800

What is 'good enough'? Reforming perfectionist wants to know. I have recently started treatment (medication and therapy) for what my doctor/psych describe as 'major depression', present since I was around 10 (now early 20s). Both of them think that a contributing factor is the pressure I put on myself to do well, and say that I should 'relax' and 'accept that I'm doing the best I can'. I'm not really a perfectionist (as I've never really done anything perfectly anyway) but I can't really imagine what else people aim for. How do you know you're 'doing your best'? Can't you always try harder?

Complication: I am one of those ridiculously lucky people who seem to be able to do anything. Academics, sports, music - I can pick up any area and do better than average without trying. Perhaps related: I don't try. It's so much effort, and why bother turning up to class/training to get fitter/whatever when I'm already better than most people and I probably can't be as good as the best? On the other hand, how can I possibly be happy with second class honours when I only attended two classes for the semester and did the assignments the night before, and it's only second class, and I might never get a good job because I don't have either excellent marks or good work habits?

How do you/did you plan, compromise, or agree on standards for your sex life?

Anonymous — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 18:32:05 -0800

How do you/did you plan, compromise, or agree on standards for your sex life? I'm 23, female, and about to get married to someone with a much higher sex drive than mine (I attribute this to his having very few sexual relationships prior to me, while I have been much more active). At first, we had the usual new-relationship-constant-sex thing that most people do, which lasted a few months, and now two and a half years later he's still expecting to have sex daily (or multiple times daily). It's not that I'm less attracted to him, but I have certainly gotten busier and less sexual - for me, 2-3 times a week would be sufficient, if not too often.

We have attempted to address this several times and come to a stalemate where compromises are concerned. He just doesn't get why I was able to have sex so often before, but can't now. Also, he seems to think that when I don't feel like having intercourse, it isn't too much to ask for me to help him manually. I disagree - while I'm not opposed to this sometimes, there are days where I just don't have the capacity for sex in any form.

So what I'm asking is, how does one work out something like this? I assume most married couples have discussed this and come to some sort of conclusion, but how, and what is it? Is it wise or normal to say "We'll do it x times a week, and if one of us does not want to, then y or z."? Is there another solution we're not seeing? What kinds of compromises or agreements do you have or know about?

I know that there are other threads like this one and this one which include suggestions on a happy married life - I need suggestions of this kind in regard to a happy married sex life.

How to choose client side technologies for a new web project.

Good Brain — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 13:13:04 -0800

Why shouldn't we use Flash? Why should we use AJAX (DHTML/Javascript)? Should we support IE6? I'm wrestling with these questions for a new web product, and I'd like insight from others. This is for a consumer oriented web app (as opposed to B2B). A richly interactive UI is considered essential. It may well be that Flash is the only way to achieve what is being imagined, but I personally think AJAX could provide a very satisfactory experience. We also have the question of whether to support IE6.

I think the top arguments for Flash are:

Most capable.

Single platform to target (acknowledging performance differences between OSs)

Likely highest productivity (richer development tools, better testing frameworks, not having to worry as much about multiple browser versions)

Better integration with client OS for things like drag and drop, file uploads, etc

Am I wrong about any of these?

The thing is, I think these things have been true for quite a while, and yet Google chose AJAX for Gmail and Google Maps, Yahoo for their remade mail client & Flickr, which started out being mostly Flash has now converted most of it to AJAX.

The main downside I see for Flash could be equally true for AJAX:

bookmarkability/sharability is hindered since displayed URL likely doesn't recreate the current view.

The other issues are harder for me to quantify:

Flash isn't "cool"

Flash isn't open

What else should I be thinking about? How have you made your decisions? Real numbers would be appreciated (are adobe's estimates of Flash penetration anything close to accurate?)

There is also the issue of IE6 support. Numbers aren't declining quickly enough, and it seems likely that the holdouts are computers in businesses. Our app isn't going to be "work related" for most people, but the reality is, people use such apps from work all the time. We don't want people to be unable to use our app from work. On the other hand, using Flash would help work around a lot of IE6 issues.

Please recommend some bog-standard classic children's music.

Bugbread — Sat, 10 May 2008 08:06:01 -0800

Please recommend some bog-standard classic children's music. I'm not looking for original children's music, like They Might Be Giants or Dino 5, but standards, like "I'm a Little Teapot", "If You're Happy And You Know It", "Mary Had A Little Lamb", etc.

I'm also not looking for clever reinterpretations, like jazz versions of the standards, cover versions by hip post-rock bands, etc.

Just the straight-forward, straight-up children's music classics.

The 'brary mystique re: MARC, etc.

10ch — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 06:57:36 -0800

Dear AskMeFi Librarians and Librarian-Wannabes, can you please explain-slash-distinguish between MARCXML, MODS, METS and EAD in terms of why one is better (or even different) than the other? I've never worked in a library and I'm only familiar enough with MARC records to know what they stand for and that they presumably need something like MARCXML, MODS, METS or EAD to make them more system-shareable and human-readable.

There internet is in no short supply of definitions and discussions about these standards, but I need someone to explain it to me (or point me to an explanation) that is in layman's terms and without presuming I have an MLS.

You folks are as bad as us webbies with the acronyms, sheesh!

Thanks.

What's the standard for g. i.e. general intelligence?

anotherpanacea — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 17:34:38 -0800

Do intelligence tests measure g (i.e. general intelligence)? How do we know? With most testing standards, there's an arbitrary physical constant in the world for us to measure and quantify: the meter is defined in terms of a wavelength of light in a vacuum, for instance. However, intelligence tests seem more like the kilogram's platinum-iridium cylinder, which is a sort of moving target. What's the standard for g? It seems like "psychometrics" always assume that analytical abilities as measured in math, reading comprehension, and various logic 'games' are highly correlated with g, but I'd like to know what sort of evidence there is for this claim. The field has a vast internal body of research on this to determine whether a particularly testing question tracks with the overall testing apparatus (they call it g-loading.) But where do they get their initial g assessments from?

I'm just trying to get my head around why this isn't a vicious circle.

Done, next time.

parmanparman — Tue, 14 Aug 2007 06:42:56 -0800

Does anyone know if there is an available multiple countdown clock for Mac or Windows that can move from one set countdown to the next automatically with an easy interface to enter new times? This would be in a format of 2',9',1',5'-7'30", etc. for an hour and then could be scalable if it runs longer than an hour. It would not need sound, but some sort of flashing to denote "one minute left", and "thirty seconds left"

Recent jazz standards?

eritain — Sat, 21 Jul 2007 01:41:55 -0800

What are the recent jazz standards? Prototypically, jazz standards are from the '40s—let's guess the median is somewhere around 1945 and the standard deviation is 15 years—but the canon is certainly not closed, as shown by, say, 'Birdland' (1977). What else has become really widely known and played, in that time frame or since? Please cite a few performers to justify your claim. Bonus points if they're in different styles or decades.

Problems with XHTML content type.

The Confessor — Wed, 30 May 2007 14:04:08 -0800

I seem to have hit a bit of a brick wall in approximating W3C XHTML standards compliance on my website. From what I've read, XHTML should be served with content type application/xhtml+xml, rather than text/html, and recent versions of Microsoft and Mozilla browsers should support serving them as such. Well, they aren't. I set the content type and character set for all of my pages using the header statement in my primary include file, as shown here.

When I try to switch the content type (currently by commenting one line and uncommenting the other), however, the following happens:

Firefox 2.0.0.3 complains that this XML file does not appear to have any style information associated with it, and displays a bare document trees.

Internet Explorer 7.0.5450.4 opens an Open/Save/Cancel for a file of type php_auto_file.

Opera for Wii shows the bare interface, stripped of all styling.

Can anybody help me figure out what's going wrong?

Can a PAL Monitor/TV work in the US

Nice Guy Mike — Sun, 13 May 2007 12:06:03 -0800

Just how international are A/V Standards, anyway...? As noted in a previous question, there's a possibility that I might get a US job, yadda yadda... :-)

Anyway, I've been making a few preparations that are generally useful whether I move overseas or not, including de-cluttering a little and deciding what I would take out to the US with me if I were to do so (some shipping is included in the relocation package). So far, it's just computer hardware, really, which is generally multi-voltage input, either by design or with the replacement of PSUs. There are a couple of other items I'm considering, specifically TV/Monitors, a Samsung 940MW that I already own, and an LG M228WA that I'm considering buying. Both are computer monitors that can handle a variety of additional A/V inputs, such as Composite, RGB and Component.

I'm not concerned about the Samsung, which specifically lists as a feature it's ability to tune into PAL, NTSC and SECAM broadcast TV and therefore presumably can plug into any cable TV, satellite TV, games console, DVD player, etc in the US. The LG website is not so forthcoming, however, with no specific information on supported TV standards.

So, to cut a long story short (too late, I hear you cry) my question:

Are there different international standards that apply to Video standards, e.g. Composite, S-Video, RGB, Component and HDMI, in the same way that the NTSC/PAL divide can cause problems? Can a US DVD player (for example) be plugged into a PAL TV player using Component connections without difficulty?

Bonus points if you can spot any other reason I couldn't use TV/monitors like these in the US (I've checked the power supplies, they'll take 110V AC, and they both have FCC approval)

What should my two year old be learning?

peripatew — Thu, 19 Apr 2007 21:01:56 -0800

Help me find learning objectives/goals for young children (3 years old) and help me find games to help! I've been digging for a while on the 'net to try to find some general objectives / standards that children should be able to do / know as the grow. My son is currently 2.5 and I'm just wanting do whatever we can to help him learn. We try to do a lot of fun activities and be creative, but I that we had some outline of development changes and things that he should be able to do, and things that he should be working on.

I remember seeing something like this that was some how related to Parents as Teachers, but after much poking on their website, I wasn't able to find anything. So...

(1) What are some resources, whether they be websites or books?

(2) Is there a specific term for what I'm looking for? Meaning "education objectives" or "developmental standards"? I tried searching, but didn't find anything specific and helpful

(3) Are there any good education computer games that are worth the money? My son loves to play on the computer, but random flash games aren't teaching him anything. Help!

Thanks!

CSS Filter: making tight CSS files, style guides and learning best practices – help needed.

rmm — Fri, 09 Mar 2007 17:32:17 -0800

CSS Filter: making tight CSS files, style guides and learning best practices – help needed. My fellow CSS enthusiasts,

Here’s me with another ‘what’s the best way to do this’ or ‘is there a template for this’ type questions – it’s my curse in life to ask these! Basically I’d like to hear what folks do for best practices in CSS design (both layout and formatting). I'm not a full time coder - just someone very interested in the topic, and I’m trying to get my stuff looking more professional and to work even better, and think maybe marking up the, err, markup might help. So I have a multi part question:

- style guides: any good examples you’ve found. I’ve seen some examples here (a visual one, from Stuff and Nonsense and one over at Dave Shea’s site). Any other good examples you’ve used or created? I’d like, of course, to find a template to speed up annotating these. If you have style guides in general (HTML or anything else – doesn’t have to be CSS) please send them here as well. If you have other things you do besides an actual style guide, tips etc. share those as well, if you can.

- standards: other than creating accessible, compliant designs that satisfy the Validator (the evil W3 corrections site), what do you do to make your code more professional? I split up the layout from the formatting, but would like to know things that help make me a better designer – i.e. do you put things in a certain order in the stylesheet, etc. I know you combine selectors wherever possible – I’m looking for those kind of best practices or standards if you’ve got them. Any recommendations for favourite books, sites and blogs etc. for advanced designing in CSS are always appreciated. There are a slew of them, and I’m looking for good quality stuff – kind of like ‘practical CSS Zen Garden’ type resources. It’s one thing to actually view source – it’s another find someone talking about the source, which I find also helpful.

(I’d ask this over at a CSS forum like CSS Creator but I likes my MeFis, know some of you are designers and know that this is probably a better place for meta discussions of design, best practices, etc. – although if you know of a better forum, let me know that too).

thank you!

CSS and Standards-Based Enterprise Software Solutions

syzygy — Tue, 06 Mar 2007 10:53:14 -0800

Is CSS and standards-based design ready for use in web-based enterprise software solutions? I'm a consultant leading a team of developers on a project that's building an enterprise software solution (think sector-oriented ERP) which has a front end that is 99% web-based.

Most of my developers have reasonable thick client experience, or reasonable web experience using tables for layout. None of them have much CSS experience. I'm pretty comfortable with CSS and standards-based design/layout, but I don't have time to program on this project, and that's not my job description (I take the specifications from the customers and bring them down to the software engineers). I've also never used non-table layouts for more software-oriented solutions (as opposed to websites whose main focus is dissemination of information).

Is CSS and standards-based design ready for use in web-based enterprise software solutions? If so, what are some good resources that deal with this topic?

Technical details: working in ASP.NET 2.0 and developing solely for IE 6+ (for right now - they'd like to make the application cross-browser compatible, down the road).

Help me make an old meets new Jazz mix CD

np312 — Fri, 01 Dec 2006 11:58:14 -0800

Looking for great vocal jazz standards sung by NOT the most obvious Jazz singers -OR- the obvious Jazz singers doing unique or non-standard Jazzy songs. I am making a mix for my boyfriend's dad, who listens to 80% easy listening music that makes us want to retch (ie dental waiting room music) and 20% famous jazz singers singing obvious Jazz standards, which is cool with us, but just, well, repetitive since he only listens to the most famous ones singing the most famous songs.

(By "obvious" singers I mean Ella Fitzgerald, Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett, Burt Bacharach, you get the idea.)

I think he'd enjoy a mix of new music that is both familiar and unique (to him.) For example Cassandra Wilson, even though she's very famous, is probably under his radar because of the generational thing, and her cover of "Don't X'plain" will probably make it onto the mix.

However, Thom Yorke singing a Jazz standard wouldn't make it on the mix because the BF's dad isn't quite hip to Radiohead vocals no matter what they might cover.

So can I get any suggestions for specific Jazz songs that are really outstanding that fit either of these criteria (old-school Jazz singer + unusual/rare material or new-school Jazz singer + old material?)

Thanks!

Standard Link Type Icons?

juiceCake — Thu, 30 Nov 2006 08:55:52 -0800

Are there standard link type icons for the web? Such as the icon indicating that link goes to an external web site? My client wishes to indicate external links, email, pdf, and pop-up links (I am aware of pop-up issues and am currently engaged in a dialog with the client.) I know you can get a standard PDF link icon from Adobe, as well as the RRS icon from Mozilla, but what about the rest?

High-quality, standards-compliant instructor-led XHTML/CSS print courseware?

Jairus — Wed, 15 Mar 2006 07:27:03 -0800

High-quality, standards-compliant instructor-led XHTML/CSS print courseware. Does it exist?