A Java imitation of GNU Units 1.86,
supplemented with a graphical interface.
Has been tested with Java Runtime Environment versions 1.4.2 and later.
GNU Units is a program for computations on values expressed in terms of different measurement units. It was written in C by Adrian Mariano (adrian@cam.cornell.edu). Using this program you can find out, for example, that 6 ft 4 in is about 1.93 m, that temperature of 75 degrees Fahrenheit is about 24 degrees Celsius, that 8 liters per 100 km is about the same as 29 miles per gallon, that electric current of 5 mA corresponds to the flow of about 3.12e16 electrons per second, or that the energy of a photon of yellow sodium light with wavelength 5896 Å is 2.103 eV.
The program supports complicated expressions and a number of mathematical functions, as well as user-defined linear, nonlinear, and piecewise-linear functions. All knowledge about measurement units is contained in the file 'units.dat'. In addition to many units from different domains and periods, the file contains a number of physical and other constants (such as pi, speed of light, mass of Earth), as well as extensive comments that can be retrieved with the help of the Units program. The file was created by Adrian Mariano, and is maintained by him. This package contains the latest version obtained from the author.
If you do not want to use Units as an applet, you have to download the Java archive (JAR) file that contains the executable Java classes (120KB). Save the JAR file in any directory, under any name of your choice with extension '.jar'. You invoke it by double-clicking on the JAR icon. If this does not work, you can type
java -jar jarfile
at the command prompt, where jarfile is the name you gave to the JAR file. Each way should open the graphic interface of Units. If you want instead the classic interactive version of Units, type
java -jar jarfile -i
at the command prompt. Refer to user's manual for other forms of invocation.
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License or (at your option) any later version.
The program has only been tested under Windows XP using Firefox, Netscape Navigator and Internet Explorer.
Latest change 2007-01-12