UNITIO.EXE
Unit conversion program
for MSDOS computers and the ATARI Portfolio.


UNITIO is a conversion utility for units of measurement. It is
possible to use the program to convert other numeric values,
for instance different rates of money exchange, but this is up
to the user. At the moment UNITIO.EXE comes with a list of
about 170 units used by physicists in different countries.
A (to my knowledge) unique property of UNITIO is that the
number of different possible conversions is unlimited.
This, firstly, because the list of units supplied can be added
to by the user, but secondly because of the formulas that can
be incorporated in the list of units.

For instance, if you want to convert a certain PRESSURE into
another unit, these are the units you can choose from:

PRESSURE
Pa     Pascal(SI)
kPa    Kilopascal
ATM    Atmosphere
Bar
PSF    Pound per sq. Foot
PSI    Pound per sq. Inch
TORR   Torricelli (Mm Hg)

Quite a range, but in some cases not sufficient. Often the
amount of pressure is not expressed in one of the above, but in
a combination of units from other physical quantities, like
Newton / m2 or even 'foot of water'.

In these cases you could choose :

(FORCE)/(AREA)
or
(DIST)*(DENS)*[G]

If you do, you are presented with  the wide range of units
UNITIO provides for FORCE, from which you could choose Newton,
and then with AREA, where you could choose for (DIST)^2 and
then for meters.

In the case of 'foot of water' you choose for
(DIST)*(DENS)*[G] , because as you will be aware a pressure of
one 'foot of water' constitutes a DISTANCE of one foot times
the DENSITY of water times the Gravitational Acceleration
Constant G.
But if you prefer, in the same way you could opt for 'mm of
mercury' or 'miles under sealevel'. The words in normal
brackets refer to other physical quantities contained in
UNITS.FIL, the square brackets are used in case only one particular
unit is indicated, as in this case G.

The possibilities are quite extended. IF the user should
incorporate enough formulas into the UNITS.FIL list, there is
hardly any problem in physics that cannot be tackled.
Operators that can be used in formulas are + - * / ^ SIN and
COS.

UNITIO was written using Borlands Turbo Pascal 5.5, with the
intention to make more use of the Atari Portfolio's
possibilities. Turbo Pascal calculates with an accuracy of about
10 decimals; not all the constants in UNITS.FIL are that accurate,
though. The routines used are standard DOS routines, so
the program works on PC, XT and AT machines as well.

The EXE file has been compacted using LZEXE by Fabrice Bellard,
to use as little of the precious card space as possible.

Sjoerd Spoelstra
Korenmolen 24
2906RA Capelle a/d IJssel
HOLLAND.