mm rulers in Affinity are not designed for humans

[Blake_S]

When selecting measurement units as mm, the rulers are mostly unusable, they don't seem to be designed for human use.

Example - I want to set content at 5 and 10 mm from the edge.
I was not able to easily do so by using a ruler.
Neither 5mm nor 10mm are marked on it.
Instead, the following values are highlighted:
4mm, 8mm, 12mm, 16mm
Instead of being divided into 4 segments, its divided into 5, which results in the wrong values being highlighted.
This makes absolutely no sense.

In order for 10mm highlight to appear, I had to zoom for over 300%, which is ridiculous. It should be visible at default zoom.

Here is a reference of how a mm ruler designed for humans looks like (from Adobe Illustrator):

and here is whatever it is that Affinity is doing:

[Martin Tolley]

Ah.... you have nailed it. I wondered why advertisment sizes seemed odd in my village newsletter and artwork originated from Illustrator always needed a bit of a push or pull to fit the master frames. Does Designer do the same thing in the same way?

[Blake_S]

Whole Affinity suite uses the same bizarre rulers. They are all divided into 5 segments between major hash marks, instead of 4.

[MikeTO]

And for inches they can be divided into sixths rather than eighths. The rulers are odd.

[HornerPhoto]

5 hours ago, MikeTO said:

And for inches they can be divided into sixths rather than eighths. The rulers are odd.

I thought it was just me!

 

[anweid]

The rulers get even worse when the paper is rotated by 90 degrees (see attachment), and even worsererer for rotations that are no multiple of 90 degrees (in this case, they should be inhibited, anyway). I created a post about the impractical rulers several years ago, but nothing has happened in the meantime...

Andreas Weidner

[Blake_S]

8 months later, program version 2.2.0, rulers are still not designed for humans.

When, if ever, this will be fixed? New features don't mean much when existing ones do not work and existing bugs aren't getting fixed

[IvanDoganov]

Setting the ruller to Metters is evem more amusing

[anweid]

Gosh! What an... erm... interesting grid...

I should try to find my old diploma thesis source code from 1992. For a control loop simulator, I had to calculate decent ruler subdivisions for technical diagrams, which is exactly the same problem. The solution was astonishingly complicated (several hundred lines of code), partly because I had to ensure that floating-point number round-off errors didn't mess up the nice scaling. Therefore: Yes, the rulers that we users would like to see seem to be quite simple, but the maths behind them is quite tricky. But of course all geometric algorithms like curve intersection etc. are much more advanced, and Serif managed to make those work really nicely, so creating nice-looking rulers should be a breeze for them (if even I myself managed, real programmers should do the same much better and quicker)...

Andreas Weidner

[Blake_S]

So, still no progress on this?

Will we ever get proper rulers that can actually be used for their intended purpose?
 

[Blake_S]

Any progress? No? In multiple years no improvement?

Like I right now need to set a guide on 27.5mm, and I can't do it using Affinity rulers, because they are not designed for human use, STILL

I can do it in any of the Adobe programs that have rulers, or any programs with rulers in general, but not in Affinity.

The half point between 20 and 30 mm, which would be 25mm, isn't even marked!
And for some reason the area between 20 and 30mm is split into 20 segments, not 10
There doesn't seem to be any magnification setting where 1 segment = 1mm
Having 20 segments between numbered delimeters, with no indication of a central one, and none of them being marked is absolutely f***ed.

Stuff like this is why I can't even recommend Affinity programs to anyone - what am I supposed to say when the topic of rulers comes up?

 

[Alfred]

47 minutes ago, Blake_S said:

And for some reason the area between 20 and 30mm is split into 20 segments, not 10

Whatever the reason, isn’t that exactly what you want for your 27.5 mm example? Splitting a 10 mm range into 20 segments gives you a segment size of 0.5 mm, so finding the 27.5 mm mark should be straightforward.

[Blake_S]

On 1/29/2024 at 3:58 PM, Alfred said:

should be straightforward.

Well, its not. On rulers made for humans, a 25mm point would be marked, so you just select a middle delimeter between 25 and 30mm and would be done.
But no! Its not marked on the affinity rulers. Instead, the closest highlighted point is 28mm. Why? Who the hell knows.

That said, still no progress on this issue?

[Alfred]

On 1/29/2024 at 1:58 PM, Alfred said:

should be straightforward.

 

31 minutes ago, Blake_S said:

Well, its not. On rulers made for humans, a 25mm point would be marked, so you just select a middle delimeter between 25 and 30mm and would be done.
But no! Its not marked on the affinity rulers. Instead, the closest highlighted point is 28mm. Why? Who the hell knows.

As I mentioned in my previous post, a segment size of 0.5 mm would be ideal here, but if the closest to a ‘middle’ delimiter is at 28 mm rather than 27.5 mm then that’s clearly not on offer in your particular scenario.

 

32 minutes ago, Blake_S said:

That said, still no progress on this issue?

Depressing, isn’t it!