Description: Draw offers a fairly lengthy list of scaling factors, but few of them are useful when the drawing is dimensioned in English units. In particular, there is no 1:12 (1 inch = 1 foot) scaling factor. Possibly one of the less used scaling factors can be changed to 1:12 (1:16, 1:30, and 1:40 seem unlikely to be widely used). Steps to Reproduce: 1.open Tools/Options/Draw/General and select scale pulldown 2.observe list does not include 1:12 3. Actual Results: needed scaling factor is not present Expected Results: 1:12 (and possibly other factors appropriate to English units) appears Reproducible: Always User Profile Reset: No Additional Info: Version: 7.2.1.2 (x64) / LibreOffice Community Build ID: 87b77fad49947c1441b67c559c339af8f3517e22 CPU threads: 12; OS: Windows 10.0 Build 19042; UI render: Skia/Raster; VCL: win Locale: en-US (en_US); UI: en-US Calc: threaded
There is room to extend the available scale values to support common non-Metric imperial/engineering factors. In addition to the 1:12 (1 inch per foot) suggested: 1:24 (1 inch to 2 feet), 1:48 (1 inch to 4 feet), and 1:96 (1 inch to 8 feet) are common values used in scale modeling and design work.
Doubt the list of 1, 2, 4, 5, 8, 10, 16, 20, 30, 40, 50, 100 covers any real-world use case. And we should aim for short lists. My take: 1,2,10,12,16,100. Or transform this into a freely editable field.
Perhaps the preset scale factor selection should be locale-dependent? Alternatively, perhaps one should be able to choose among several common scales, e.g. * Powers of 2 * Powers of 10 * English measurements * Powers of sqrt(2), or something else corresponding to ISO A paper sizes * etc. ?
I don't think locale-dependent would be helpful. I'm sure I'm not the only one to sometimes work in mm and sometimes in ft/inch. I also don't think somehow tieing it to paper sizes would be helpful. The scale of a dimensioned drawing should have no connection to what size (or even if) it's printed. It does sound like more investigation of common scaling factors would be desirable.
(In reply to John McCoy from comment #4) > I don't think locale-dependent would be helpful. I'm sure I'm not the only > one to sometimes work in mm and sometimes in ft/inch. That asks for a context-dependent solution...
Context-dependant sounds like it's maybe over-complicating the solution. After all, most of the ratios (e.g. 1:2, 1:4, 1:10) apply in both systems of units. There's only 2 or 3 that would be useful in English units only, and I don't think that makes the list unduely long.
(In reply to John McCoy from comment #6) > Context-dependant sounds like it's maybe over-complicating the solution. > After all, most of the ratios (e.g. 1:2, 1:4, 1:10) apply in both systems of > units. There's only 2 or 3 that would be useful in English units only, and > I don't think that makes the list unduely long. Sounds reasonable to me. Thanks.
We discussed the topic in the design meeting. The quick solution could be 1,2,5,10,12,24,48,50,100, and we suggest to implement this. But more flexible input with arbitrary values would be desirable. Code pointer: sd/source/ui/dlg/tpoption.cxx #424 sd/source/ui/app/scalectrl.cxx #82
I am extremely impressed with how quickly this bug has been responded to. Great credit to everyone involved! I would propose that 1:4 would likely be more useful than 1:24, 48, or 50. If there's a concern for the size of the list or the amount of effort required we might swap 1:4 for one of the others. An arbitrary scaling factor would certainly be nice, but given there's some weird ratios used in various places (e.g. 1:87 for HO scale modelers) it might be challenging to implement.
(In reply to John McCoy from comment #9) > I would propose that 1:4 would likely be more useful than 1:24, 48, or 50. What makes 1:4 so special? Same arguments as in comment 1 for the other ratios probably.
Users of English units tend to do things by halves - thus 1/4 (half of a half) and 1/8 (half of a half of a half) could be useful. Metric users, of course, tend to do things by 10ths. I don't immediately see a usecase for 1:24, 1:48, or 1:50, but someone else may find value in them - that's why I'm just suggesting 1:4 might be more useful. If we were trying to minimize the list I'd say 2, 10, 12, 100. I'm not sure where the line is between unneccessarily short and overly long and cumbersome.
Why not use different set with { 1, 2, 5, 10, 25, 50, 100 } for metric locales and { 1, 2, 4, 8, 12, 24, 48 } for imperial? The locale is set via tools > options > languages and locales > general: formats > locale setting. It requires a restart of the application. Patch at https://gerrit.libreoffice.org/c/core/+/177790
(In reply to Heiko Tietze from comment #12) > Why not use different set with { 1, 2, 5, 10, 25, 50, 100 } for metric > locales and { 1, 2, 4, 8, 12, 24, 48 } for imperial? The locale is set via > tools > options > languages and locales > general: formats > locale setting. > It requires a restart of the application. > > Patch at https://gerrit.libreoffice.org/c/core/+/177790 Not a fan. There really is no reason to separate U.S. non-metric locale from the rest of the world. U.S. is gradually moving to metric, no sense in continuing that. But, depending on design/engineering discipline, practice of scaling by halves vs. tenths remains--with tools to convert commong. And there are oddballs, like HO Scale (1:87) of model railroading. Best would be to just keep them combined rather than some convoluted test against the UI user locale. Single list to cover the basic: 1,2,4,5,8,10,12,24,25,48,50,87,96,100 But one could ask why no √(2) ~= 1:1.41421356 constant to support scaling between ISO 216 page sizes?
Okay, idea rejected. Back to easyhack.