User profile for user: The Thoroughbred
The Thoroughbred Author
User level: Level 1
5 points

Ruler Scale

Hi, I am relatively new to macs. I haven't yet created a document using my first mac computer. Deciding to write an essay in appleworks, I noticed that the page was slightly smaller. The scale on the bottom left is 100%. So I checked page setup, and that was on A4 and the scale on there was 100% too. I couldn't understand what the **** was going on. So I measured the rulers at the top which is what is so wrong. You see an A4 page measures around 21cm x 29.7cm. But the scale shows the width of the page ending at just under 19cm wide. But in reality it is around 16cm. Since the page is zooming at 100%, the page should measure realistically with a real ruler. So I got my ruler out measured it and find it doesn't. 1cm on screen isn't even 1cm I measured it with my ruler. This goes the same for my Trial version of my Pages application. Now I can change the zoom to 127% or the scale in page setup to 80%, to acheaive a true 100% scale. However changing the scale doesn't really fix the ruler situation, but the zoom does.

How do I fix this. Does the Zoom in the bottom left have to be at 125% for it really to be 100%. Can someone explain, help, fix this. Please someone enlighten me.

14" iBook 1.42ghz 1.5GB 100GB HDD, Mac OS X (10.4.5)

Posted on Mar 17, 2006 3:56 PM

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9 replies
User profile for user: Michael Morgan1
Michael Morgan1
User level: Level 7
23,831 points

Mar 17, 2006 4:40 PM in response to The Thoroughbred

I just put this down to AW being an old app, built for older systems, not Cocoa/Quartz/etc./etc. aware .... it simply doesn't tie in with the OS in the same ways that newer, native apps do.

If you want to have the rulers 'scale out' properly, you can simply change your screen resolution to the one that AW was (in my way of thinking of it) designed into, i.e, 1024 x 640. Scaling it up manually also works, of course.

I suspect newer and more capable apps simply look at whatever you're running for resolution and scale themselves accordingly. AW doesn't appear to do that.
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User profile for user: Peggy
Peggy
User level: Level 8
41,847 points

Mar 17, 2006 7:51 PM in response to The Thoroughbred

I answered this question in your other thread. It is very confusing to have two (or more) threads with the same topic going. Not everyone reads every singe post & suggestions posted by others can be missed. I will ask the Hosts to delete the other thread. Here is what I posted:

Back in the days when monitor sizes &, particularly, resolutions were fairly limited, 100% on the screen was 100% on paper. Now, with so many choices, this isn't so. But you can change the zoom percentage to match 100% on your monitor & then save that document as a default template for AppleWorks to use. Many users find a number between 117% & 125% is about right. Once you get that set & any other settings such as font, margins, tabs, etc. as you would like every new, blank AppleWorks document to have, see my user tip, New, blank documents with your settings, for the rest.
Peggy
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User profile for user: Bruce De Benedictis
Bruce De Benedictis
User level: Level 4
1,697 points

Mar 17, 2006 8:06 PM in response to Peggy

What Peggy says in correct. There is no way for the computer to know how many pixels per unit of length there are on a given monitor. Two different sized monitors could have the same resolution. The 800 x 600 (for example) resolution on a 17" monitor will have more pixels in an inch than a 20" monitor, for instance. Applications only deal with pixels, so the rulers that they use are dependent on the monitor and resolution that they are displayed on.

So setting the viewing zoom to the size that works is the correct way to deal with it. It will take a different zoom for different monitors and different resolutions.
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User profile for user: The Thoroughbred
The Thoroughbred Author
User level: Level 1
5 points

Mar 25, 2006 7:48 PM in response to The Thoroughbred

Firstly thanks to everyone who helped. I suppose I will have to deal with it. And thanks peggy for the blank document thing, I suppose I can do that.
To the person who said that the application has no way of knowing the size of an actual pixel, shouldn't the display drivers tell the whole OS what size the monitor is etc. In my case I am running an iBook, so it's the system drivers (not sure if that was the correct term) that should tell the application what size the monitor is. And if I am not wrong, all the years I ran XP I am sure my Micro$oft Word shows a true 100% of the Document. I will double check when I am able and confirm this though.

Yvan Koenig, are you a moderator. You seem to know so much and always helping people with problems. It must be a hobby or a job.
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User profile for user: Brie Fly
Brie Fly
User level: Level 5
7,925 points

Mar 25, 2006 8:48 PM in response to The Thoroughbred

To the person who said that the application has no way of knowing
the size of an actual pixel, shouldn't the display drivers tell the
whole OS what size the monitor is


Have you ever gone to the Displays panel in your system preferences? In it you'll find at least three different screen resolutions to choose from (more, depending on your monitor's specifications). On the same monitor and with your document at 100%, would you expect the document ruler to be 1:1 with the real world at all three of these screen resolutions?

The OS doesn't care what physical size the monitor is. It displays rows of pixels, and there are a number of different variables that determine the size of each pixel. At 100%, 72 pixels usually represent an inch -- regardless of whether the pixel is pinpoint size (like in a pocket viewer) or whether the pixel is 1 or 2 inches across (like on a billboard). Your monitor is somewhere in between.
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User profile for user: Barry
Barry
User level: Level 9
60,023 points

Mar 25, 2006 10:53 PM in response to Brie Fly

At 100%, 72 pixels usually represent
an inch -- regardless of whether the pixel is
pinpoint size (like in a pocket viewer) or whether
the pixel is 1 or 2 inches across (like on a
billboard). Your monitor is somewhere in between.


BF's comment rang a bell for me. 72dpi was the standard pitch for a Macintosh screen when ClarisWorks/AppleWorks was introduced, and at that time, Mac screens had only a single resolution.

A few years later, when Windows was introduced (or sometime later than that) the standard pitch for a Windows display was 96 dpi. With the introduction of OS X (and the underlying UNIX), I suspect the Mac's default pitch switched to 96 dpi as well. The change in display pitch crams the same number of pixels into 75% of the (linear) space, and that's likely the number the OS uses to adjust image size to '100%'.

AppleWorks, because of its age and its time of birth, has missed the shift in screen resolution, and hasn't received the code revisions necessary to take the necessary counter measures.

That's a back construction of the causes of the problem, and may be full of hooey, but it appears to be a reasonable explanation to my mind.

YMMV, of course.

Regards,
Barry
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Ruler Scale

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