Re: [Inkscape-devel] NEW: units, misc
IMO it would be more useful to be able to set the default units on a per-user basis, rather than on a per-document basis. The method of storing the preference in a standard piece of stationery requires extra steps from the user. Personally I just want millimeters, always, and never anything but millimeters :-)
On Wed, 29 Dec 2004 21:32:12 +0000, Ben Crowell <inkscapecrowell04@...603...> wrote:
IMO it would be more useful to be able to set the default units on a per-user basis, rather than on a per-document basis. The method of storing the preference in a standard piece of stationery requires extra steps from the user. Personally I just want millimeters, always, and never anything but millimeters :-)
I disagree. If I get someone's document and some object there is shown as 127mm wide, this is convenient for me as metric-lover, but I may have no idea why the creator used this particular size. On the other hand, if he used inches and that is saved with the document, I see at once that it is 5 inches wide, which makes more sense. Another example is if someone is drawing a plan of a house and uses meters (or even a country map using kilometers); if I open his plan and see all sizes in points, they will look rather weird. In other words, the units of a document are part of its semantics and should be stored in it.
Hello.
On Wed, 29 Dec 2004 23:40:49 -0400, bulia byak <buliabyak@...400...> wrote: [...]
Another example is if someone is drawing a plan of a house and uses meters (or even a country map using kilometers); if I open his plan and see all sizes in points, they will look rather weird.
[...]
I, as a metric system user, know for sure what 12.7 mm is, so 127 mm would look suspicious at all matters. And a floor plan in meters if the original author intended inches or yards, would still look alright, for those are the units I can picture in my head!
Also, if I were a pt-unit lover and see a country map with a bazillion pt in some measure, that'd definitely make sense to me, no matter what the original rounding intention of the author was.
I certainly don't find myself comfortable working with inches, and am used to have margins (in word processors) of 2.54 cm and the like. It is indeed a general preference of mine, and wouldn't like it to be document-specific.
Greetings!
Daniel Díaz yosoy@...31...
On Wed, 29 Dec 2004 22:50:54 -0600, Daniel Díaz <mrchapp@...400...> wrote:
I, as a metric system user, know for sure what 12.7 mm is, so 127 mm would look suspicious at all matters.
This sounds more like you are not only a metric system user, but a metric system user who has to work predominantly in an imperial environment :) I never had any significant exposure to the imperial system, so for me 127mm rings no bell at all.
I certainly don't find myself comfortable working with inches, and am used to have margins (in word processors) of 2.54 cm and the like. It is indeed a general preference of mine, and wouldn't like it to be document-specific.
Please consider this:
- What we are discussing only applies to the exchange of SVG documents between users. For yourself, you can save your default template with mm and you'll never see anything else in your documents. Exchange of documents is a much less frequent situation than creating new documents.
- With the current system, if you get a document with inches, for you it's a matter of a couple clicks to switch it to mm. If however units are not stored in document, for those who need them stored (like myself, since I do need different units in different documents) there will be no easy workaround. So it's not a fair thing to compare mild inconvenience for you against a badly missed feature for me :)
A compromise that will work for everyone is to add "global units" selector to the Inkscape prefs, with a checkbox "override document units". If you really need this, please add it to the RFE tracker and I will implement it when I have time. However just removing units from document is not an option, for the reasons listed above.
On Wed, 29 Dec 2004, bulia byak wrote:
On Wed, 29 Dec 2004 21:32:12 +0000, Ben Crowell <inkscapecrowell04@...603...> wrote:
IMO it would be more useful to be able to set the default units on a per-user basis, rather than on a per-document basis. The method of storing the preference in a standard piece of stationery requires extra steps from the user. Personally I just want millimeters, always, and never anything but millimeters :-)
I disagree. If I get someone's document and some object there is shown as 127mm wide, this is convenient for me as metric-lover, but I may have no idea why the creator used this particular size. On the other hand, if he used inches and that is saved with the document, I see at once that it is 5 inches wide, which makes more sense. Another example is if someone is drawing a plan of a house and uses meters (or even a country map using kilometers); if I open his plan and see all sizes in points, they will look rather weird. In other words, the units of a document are part of its semantics and should be stored in it.
What I would like to see is that when I load a document that I've explicitly set dimensions to - such as a woodworking project set to inches, or a game map set to km, or my website layout set to px, that they show up that way, but by default if I start a new drawing or open one that has not had any units specified for it, that it defaults to my preference (cm or whatever).
Bryce
On Wed, 29 Dec 2004 21:31:09 -0800 (PST), Bryce Harrington <bryce@...260...> wrote:
What I would like to see is that when I load a document that I've explicitly set dimensions to - such as a woodworking project set to inches, or a game map set to km, or my website layout set to px, that they show up that way, but by default if I start a new drawing or open one that has not had any units specified for it, that it defaults to my preference (cm or whatever).
This is exactly how the current system works. Except for the last part - it always defaults to pt if no units specified, but this can be changed.
On Thu, 30 Dec 2004, bulia byak wrote:
On Wed, 29 Dec 2004 21:31:09 -0800 (PST), Bryce Harrington <bryce@...260...> wrote:
What I would like to see is that when I load a document that I've explicitly set dimensions to - such as a woodworking project set to inches, or a game map set to km, or my website layout set to px, that they show up that way, but by default if I start a new drawing or open one that has not had any units specified for it, that it defaults to my preference (cm or whatever).
This is exactly how the current system works. Except for the last part
- it always defaults to pt if no units specified, but this can be
changed.
Excellent, then that makes it easy. Ben, does this also work for you?
Bryce
participants (4)
-
Ben Crowell -
Bryce Harrington -
bulia byak -
Daniel Díaz