Calculator: Please add light-years as a unit of measurement

[atticus112]

Problem Statement
please add light years as a unit of measurement

Evidence or User Insights
light-years are important

Proposal
just please add them>

Goals
users should be able to convert other units of distance to and from light-years

Non-Goals

Low-Fidelity Concept
one light-year is 5868696000000 miles

[HowardWolosky]

Thanks for the feature suggestion! I'd love to better understand why you're asking for this feature. We have a process in place for feature suggestions that impact the end-user experience, which includes a template that helps frame the feature pitch. Please update using that template (which is already part of the issue you created...you just didn't fill it out). All you need to do is _edit_ your Issue to add the necessary details, and then we'll be able to evaluate this request further.

Thanks for your interest in our project!

[atticus112]

done

[MicrosoftIssueBot]

This is your friendly Microsoft Issue Bot. I've seen this issue come in and have gone to tell a human about it.

[ferzkopp]

Documentation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light-year

Notes: The IAU recognized abbreviation for light-year is ly ... and localized symbols are frequent, such as "al" in French (from année-lumière) and Spanish (from año luz), "Lj" in German (from Lichtjahr), etc.

[ferzkopp]

... and please also add "parsec"

Documentation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parsec

The parsec (symbol: pc) is a unit of length used to measure large distances to astronomical objects outside the Solar System. ... One parsec is equal to about 3.261563777 ly

[grochocki]

@atticus112 We had the chance to review this pitch more closely, and while light-years are certainly a distance unit we _could_ add, we felt that one-off unit additions might not be the best approach here. Others have commented on the usefulness (or not) of some units like Yobibytes in other converters and #275 suggests adding months and nanoseconds as units of time.

I'd like to propose closing this issue and opening a new one to cover:

• Defining criteria to guide deciding which units to include (or not)
• Auditing existing units against that criteria (and if warranted, remove some units)
• Identifying and adding missing units across different converters (including customary units, like #382)

Do you think that might be a reasonable approach to address adding missing units? If so, would you be interested in putting that together or would you prefer I do that?

[ferzkopp]

@grochocki - One suggestion: parity with (or use of) an external service such as Bing (which can do it: https://www.bing.com/search?q=1ly+in+mm&qs=n&form=QBRE&sp=-1&pq=1ly+in+mm&sc=3-9&sk=).

[grochocki]

I'd like to propose closing this issue and opening a new one to cover:

• Defining criteria to guide deciding which units to include (or not)
• Auditing existing units against that criteria (and if warranted, remove some units)
• Identifying and adding missing units across different converters (including customary units, like #382)

@atticus112 any thoughts on taking a more through approach with this one?

@ferzkopp would you be interested in elaborating on your suggestion in a new feature pitch?

[MovGP0]

I guess that a light second might be useful too. In electronics, I am interested how far electrons and photons travel in a given time (usually somewhere in ns to ms timescales), but don't want to convert years to seconds.

[ferzkopp]

@grochocki - Done. https://github.com/microsoft/calculator/issues/515

[grochocki]

Thanks, @ferzkopp! Closing this issue; lets continue the conversation in #515.