Talk:Base32

message: In reality, the only interesting thing one can say about this base is its use in Base32. In my opinion, the article Base 32 should be "merge" to this article in accordance with Wikipedia:Notability (numbers). QQ (talk) 11:19, 23 May 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: (Oppose) I have added base-32 numerals of Ngiti to meet the notability criteria. - TAKASUGI Shinji (talk) 08:23, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

text: (Compromise?) Given the similarity of the names, and the differences in concept, perhaps a disambiguation reference would be in order. Mdin617 (talk) 21:03, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

text: User:Double sharp executed the merger of Base 32 into Base32 several years ago. I think that was a bad idea and done without, if not against, consensus. Despite the confusingly similar names, having separate articles for the numeral system and related computer encodings probably would be preferable. The present (merged) article is not great in terms of describing the numeral system. It's mostly about computer encodings and may leave people who aren't programmers or very IT-minded more befuddled than anything else. It might even confuse people who know a lot about numeral systems and maths but who are not programmers. ReadOnlyAccount (talk) 02:57, 24 October 2023 (UTC)

text: PS: Second thought, given the importance of, but non-consensus on representation of base-32 digits, maybe a shared article showing all these implementations is okay – IF it is edited for a general audience, with due weight and attention to the numeral system and a good general introduction to it.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by ReadOnlyAccount (talk • contribs) 04:26, 24 October 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Proposal for merging 

message: This does not seem a good idea. The two subjects, Base 32 and Base32 encoding, are very different. Merging the two would only result in replacing two clear and concise articles with a single long and confusing article.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 194.221.133.226 (talk) 11:26, 26 June 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: User:Double sharp executed the merger of Base 32 into Base32 several years ago. I think that was a bad idea and done without, if not against, consensus. Despite the confusingly similar names, having separate articles for the numeral system and related computer encodings probably would be preferable. The present (merged) article is not great in terms of describing the numeral system. It's mostly about computer encodings and may leave people who aren't programmers or very IT-minded more befuddled than anything else. It might even confuse people who know a lot about numeral systems and maths but who are not programmers. ReadOnlyAccount (talk) 02:57, 24 October 2023 (UTC)

text: PS: Second thought, given the importance of, but non-consensus on representation of base-32 digits, maybe a shared article showing all these implementations is okay – IF it is edited for a general audience, with due weight and attention to the numeral system and a good general introduction to it.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by ReadOnlyAccount (talk • contribs) 04:26, 24 October 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Response to Proposal for merging 

message: This is incredibly un-noteworthy original research, why is this even in here? Vote remove.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.129.57.239 (talk) 22:59, 16 July 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: Crockford's Base32 has a few sources cited in this article, so it appears to meet the Wikipedia:Notability definition, and does not appear as the kind of "original research" described by Wikipedia:No original research. --DavidCary (talk) 05:01, 26 June 2014 (UTC)
replies: text:  This does indeed not look like original research, but I think some sources describing where it is used could be useful.  Currently there is only a link to Crockford's website describing the system.  (There used to be a few more links describing implementations for several platforms, but they were removed; anyway I don't think these references did prove notability.) —Cousteau (talk) 15:49, 20 July 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Crockford's Base32 

message: Shouldn't
 padding	=
be better placed at the bottom of the last column in the table?  Jidanni (talk) 03:41, 8 April 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: Presumably User:Jidanni was referring to the table in the RFC 4648 Base32 alphabet section?(I have no opinion on whether to move the "padding    =" entry to the rightmost column.) ReadOnlyAccount (talk) 04:05, 24 October 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: Second thought, I think Jidanni has a point, because the current arrangement suggests that padding follows 7 before 8, which it clearly shouldn't. ReadOnlyAccount (talk) 04:43, 27 October 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: I have just done this – I've moved the padding entry to the right. –ReadOnlyAccount (talk) 01:43, 2 December 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Padding" belongs in the last column of the table 

message: I was trying to identify the variant this coding (see element "base32 ...") uses but it appears to be none of the listed one. 50.68.41.27 (talk) 23:28, 7 January 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Another variant? 

message: Ever since this edit the article has mixed a bulleted RFC in with a footnoted reflist. I'm not sure that's ideal. ReadOnlyAccount (talk) 06:49, 24 October 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Reflist 

message: If this edit is correct, then it would seem that entire section possibly doesn't even belong here, since this article does not seem to be about any and all thirty-something bases, but only about base-32. ReadOnlyAccount (talk) 13:50, 24 October 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Base-31 

message: The example that was added via these two edits seems not very good. First of all, it says it's "using the previously described 32-character set", but what's previously described in the lede is "using (...) the twenty-two upper-case letters A–V and the digits 0-9", which is base32hex, and that is not what this example actually uses, since it contains the letters W, Y and Z, which are not in base32hex. (NB: It seems this edit is to blame for the mismatch.) Secondly, this example string appears to be RFC 4648 Base32 encoded, but decoding the ciphertext string as that yields hex/binary data, not just a simple (and more easily understandable) text string. It appears to be a somewhat random bunch of bytes, so what does that tell the reader? Really not much. (I mean, if you can make sense of , be my guest.) Worse, the preceding sentence reads: "The rest of this article discusses the use of Base32 for representing byte strings, not unsigned integer numbers, similar to the way Base64 works." Depending on what is meant by "byte strings"—and the language is fuzzy—a reasonable reader could expect text strings (made from bytes!), which at least this example doesn't seem to encode. Besides, any byte could be interpreted as a signed or unsigned number, so the sentence may be more of a diary entry of a light bulb going on above its author's head, without being similarly illuminating to anyone else. Also, providing only the encoded string without the corresponding decoded form makes the example a lot less useful, especially in an encyclopædic context. A decent example would use text only, and provide both the plaintext and ciphertext. Or, if you really needed to demonstrate the encoding of binary data, you would include better context as to what exactly that binary data represents. The context provided here is that the example string is an "IPFS CIDv1 in Base32 upper-case encoding". That's great. What's a CIDv1? Oh, look: Even the linked article doesn't answer that question. And even disregarding the fact that this is a bit of an unsolved riddle, why have an example in the lede at all? Especially since despite the argument from authority provided by the RFCs, it's not yet clear which duotrigesimal notation will become universally accepted (if any). In the case of the hexadecimal numeral system, it also used to be the case that people had different ideas as to notation early on, but there the dust has long since settled, and despite some differences on ancillary details like 0x2F vs 2Fh, fundamentally just about everybody agrees how hexadecimal is written. The same cannot be said for duotrigesimal. Far from everybody agrees how to write base-32, and it's not even clear whether the RFC's base32 or base32hex will ultimately win out over the other. That makes putting an example in the lede even worse, because now you're picking favourites. —ReadOnlyAccount (talk) 17:57, 24 October 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: Edit note: The dodgy example was in the lede; now it's not, hence I have struck out related phrasing above. Some of the other concerns still apply, but are in the process of being addressed. Perhaps, if having examples is deemed helpful, perhaps we could add a comparison table with examples for all the various alternatives. I'm not 100% convinced that would be super-helpful and encyclopædic, but it might beat having examples strewn and scattered in each of the respective subsections – which in turn might beat playing favourites and only providing one example when standardisation isn't settled. —ReadOnlyAccount (talk) 10:42, 26 October 2023 (UTC)

text: Disambiguated.  As for the fuzzy "byte strings", would "raw binary data" work better? —Cousteau (talk) 01:48, 26 October 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks, and yes, I think the latter would work better. —ReadOnlyAccount (talk) 10:22, 26 October 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Dodgy example 

message: First, see above for my earlier critique of the sentence in question (in the lede).Secondly, note that it can also be parsed one of two different ways (parentheses added):
# (The rest of this article discusses the use of Base32 for representing byte strings, not unsigned integer numbers), similar to the way Base64 works.
# The rest of this article discusses the use of Base32 for representing byte strings, not (unsigned integer numbers, similar to the way Base64 works).
ReadOnlyAccount (talk) 18:34, 24 October 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: Disambiguated.  As for the fuzzy "byte strings", would "raw binary data" work better? —Cousteau (talk) 01:48, 26 October 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks, and yes, I think the latter would work better. —ReadOnlyAccount (talk) 10:22, 26 October 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Dodgy sentence in the lede, redux 

message: At the peril of offending fans of Gertrude Stein, the phrasing "Base32 is the base-32 numeral system" strikes me as particularly inelegant. The problem is, it was introduced in the context of a not well-settled low-heat edit direction dispute over whether this page is for the numeral system, computer implementations, or both (see the rest of this Talk page). Anyway, this edit is to blame for the near-tautology. ReadOnlyAccount (talk) 18:17, 25 October 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  A base is a base is a base 

message: It's probably not ideal that of the six major encoding tables currently in the article, two are horizontally arranged while the other four are vertically arranged, and there also are some subtle and unnecessary differences between the respective tables' layouts, etc. Is there a table format everybody can agree on?
—ReadOnlyAccount (talk) 04:25, 27 October 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: I have now changed the first two tables to the same format. With agreement, perhaps more could follow? —ReadOnlyAccount (talk) 02:08, 2 December 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Encoding table format