siunitx and adjectives

Question

I would like to know if the siunitx package offers the possibility of adding an adjective after the unit, to get a hyphenated compound adjective.

For instance, when typesetting "a 10 km-long road", I would like to pass the adjective as an optional argument to \SI{1}{\kilo\meter}, as in \SI[[adj=long]{1}{\kilo\meter}, instead of having to type \SI{1}{\kilo\meter}-long.

Please understand that there is nothing wrong with the \SI{1}{\kilo\meter}-long syntax. It just "feels" wrong to hyphenate a command with a word. Also, I think this would make corrections a bit more straightforward.

If this functionality is not offered, is it something the author of the package has thought of or is planning to implement?

Answer 1

You could define your own macro:

\newcommand*\SIadj[4][]{\SI[#1]{#3}{#4}-#2}

and use it as

\SIadj{long}{1}{\kilo\metre}

If you want to prevent hypenations use

\newcommand*\SIadj[4][]{\mbox{\SI[#1]{#3}{#4}-#2}}

or

\newcommand*\SIadj[4][]{\SI[#1]{#3}{#4}\hbox{-}#2}