Why is every 4mm on the Ruler emphasized in Publisher

[neville]

Hi all, I'm new to playing around with DTP, so this might be a very basic question.

In Affinity Publisher I've created a new A4 document and turned on the option 'Show Rulers'. Looking at the rulers, I notice that every 4mm is represented by a longer line. In other words, every 4mm is emphasized on the ruler. See my screenshot below. I would have expected a round number, such as every 5mm. Does anybody know what is special about every 4mm? Is this something that has been agreed upon in the publishing world?

[Old Bruce]

11 hours ago, neville said:

In Affinity Publisher I've created a new A4 document and turned on the option 'Show Rulers'. Looking at the rulers, I notice that every 4mm is represented by a longer line. In other words, every 4mm is emphasized on the ruler. See my screenshot below. I would have expected a round number, such as every 5mm. Does anybody know what is special about every 4mm? Is this something that has been agreed upon in the publishing world?

If you change your zoom level the emphasis will change. This is not something that has been agreed upon in the publishing world it is just a quirk in Affinity. I find it extremely frustrating at times having to count and then count again. I wish there was some sort of logical set of subdivisions for each type of unit.

[neville]

I hope somebody from Serif can reply to acknowledge the issue.

[Gralvik]

I totally agree on the above remarks.
To me the rulers in Publisher seem very unorthodox. If I'm working with millimeter scales (no problem to switch from inches or pixels) and I'd like emphasize on some useful divisions, like 5 and 10, rather than 2 and 4. Is there any possibility to change this behavior?
Of course you can read the tiny figures while moving guides, or use the guides manager, but it would be nice to ha a sensible scale  on the rulers.
(I'm using the 1.7.1.404 release)

[Wosven]

It was asked more than once to have normalized subdivisions… but I suspect they don't use metric rulers at Affinity so it's not important for them.
There's the same problem with erronous French automatic quote. Those flaws aren't reported as bugs.

 

 

[Alfred]

10 minutes ago, Wosven said:

I suspect they don't use metric rulers at Affinity

I imagine that some (all?) of the developers at Serif are too young to be more than vaguely aware of inches, so I don’t think that’s the reason for these oddities. It seems more likely that it’s purely and simply the result of programming errors.

[Palatino]

1 hour ago, Alfred said:

… the result of programming errors.

The basic unit in the IT area is inches - see screens, hard disks, software ...

I don't know if the affinity programs are inches or points, but they are not metric measures. These are the result of a conversion process.

[Alfred]

7 minutes ago, Palatino said:

The basic unit in the IT area is inches - see screens, hard disks, software ...

Fair comment!

7 minutes ago, Palatino said:

I don't know if the affinity programs are inches or points, but they are not metric measures. These are the result of a conversion process.

They’re probably using twips.

[walt.farrell]

3 hours ago, Wosven said:

It was asked more than once to have normalized subdivisions… ... Those flaws aren't reported as bugs.

Serif seldom comments on feature requests, as I'm sure you know.

But if no one has reported this as a bug, perhaps someone should. Serif will respond, and though the answer may be "working as designed, we'll move this to the feature requests section" it will at least have gotten an answer.   (And, who knows, they might agree it's a bug.)

[Wosven]

1 hour ago, walt.farrell said:

Serif seldom comments on feature requests, as I'm sure you know.

That's not feature requests but bugs!

Metric system was created at our Revolution to unify with a simple design and simple way to count, and stop using all the old and complicated other systems with difficult conversions or no concordance between mesurements. It's a decimal system, with a standard meter as reference. Using non decimal mesurement is heresy and a bug

Same point with the automatic French quotes that insert wrong characters (‹›) instead of the ones we find in almost each of our sentences: I posted twice about this with no result.

Features need to be implemented. Bugs are easiers: they just need to be easily corrected when they are as simple as this.

[Alfred]

3 minutes ago, Wosven said:

[Bugs] just need to be easily corrected

Some bugs are more easily corrected than others, of course! And bug fixes have to be thoroughly tested to make sure they haven’t broken something else.

[Palatino]

38 minutes ago, Wosven said:

Using non decimal mesurement is heresy and a bug

But the Americans have come to the moon with it. 

[walt.farrell]

59 minutes ago, Wosven said:

That's not feature requests but bugs!

Yes, but you referenced a topic you started on this, that you had placed in the Feedback forum, which is where feature requests go.

If you think it's a bug you should post in the bugs forum, instead.

[Wosven]

21 minutes ago, Palatino said:

But the Americans have come to the moon with it.

I was talking about using non decimal for the metric system that is decimal.

I don't mind if people count with pears, apples and mesure with feet, hands and fingers, cups and such, that's their problem (I only find those measures usefull when cooking: it's easier to use spoons, cups, etc. than weighing small ingredients!)

 

10 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

that you had placed in the Feedback forum, which is where feature requests go.

My bad. The 3 posts are in "suggestions &  discussions" and this one in in "questions".  I'll create a  new one and link to the other ones, no need to write all this again!

[Wosven]

But I think the main idea to post in those forum instead of the bug sections, is because it affects all the apps, and it would be ridiculous to post thrice (or 6 times with the Bêta) about the same subject.

[walt.farrell]

1 hour ago, Wosven said:

But I think the main idea to post in those forum instead of the bug sections, is because it affects all the apps, and it would be ridiculous to post thrice (or 6 times with the Bêta) about the same subject.

So pick one (but not the beta, because it's not new behavior with the beta); you don't need to post in all of them

[R C-R]

I blame the whole thing on our ancestors being a bit too clever & including their thumbs when they started counting on their fingers. If not for that, we would have a nice, power of two based octal system. 

[Alfred]

22 minutes ago, R C-R said:

I blame the whole thing on our ancestors being a bit too clever & including their thumbs when they started counting on their fingers. If not for that, we would have a nice, power of two based octal system. 

https://youtube.com/watch?v=W6OaYPVueW4&t=2m33s

[R C-R]

It saddens me to think there is probably at least one generation if not several who are not familiar with Tom Lehrer's satirical comedy.

[AndyQ]

On 7/28/2019 at 11:11 PM, Wosven said:

Metric system was created at our Revolution to unify with a simple design and simple way to count, and stop using all the old and complicated other systems with difficult conversions or no concordance between mesurements. It's a decimal system, with a standard meter as reference. Using non decimal mesurement is heresy and a bug

Thanks for your revolution mate. We enjoy metric down-under as well and it shitz me no end having to deal with American software that bases everything on inches then translates to metric with precision limits that result in nasty errors (I'm thinking 3D Studio MAX here, but also Illustrator and other graphics software). How people deal with the seemingly random measurement systems of yesteryear is simple mindboggling, I can't fathom it (and yes, that pun was intended).

[AndyQ]

On 7/29/2019 at 9:54 AM, R C-R said:

It saddens me to think there is probably at least one generation if not several who are not familiar with Tom Lehrer's satirical comedy.

I had to look that up, not because I'm the wrong generation, I'm the wrong country (there are 194 countries other than the United States, which have about 95% of the world population). Anyway...I've learned something today, so thanks. I'll forget it tomorrow as I'm getting old and the brain cells are dying..

[Gradient_Phil]

1 hour ago, AndyQ said:

...I'll forget it tomorrow as I'm getting old and the brain cells are dying..

Yep...I'm in the same club

[neville]

Still hoping that somebody from the Affinity Team will respond to the issue, described in the initial post.

[JSShelton]

Zooming in on the ruler at the guide gives you their accurate mm placement - whilst this helps I totally agree that this is a bug and should be "fixed" How hard is it to divide by ten?

[Wosven]

Very very hard, since this bug is really old...