Only kidding, but this makes me think about the "The Argument" by Monty Python (Eric Idle and John Cleese in this case)...
But as I said before it would be nice to be able to set the wanted number of decimals or maybe let OpenOffice be able to detect how many decimals the user types and just take care about what was actually typed. Maybe it doesn't have to show more than 2 or 3 decimals, the important thing is how many it use for calculations.
Another nice thing, I think, would be if we also could enter values like this, no matter what unit is used: 4 11/16. Then we wouldn't have to worry about decimals in those cases. Maybe we want to split 180 mm into 7 columns. Then it would be convenient to set the column width to 180/7 mm directly. Or tab stops or whatever we are working with at the moment. We just don't have to know that 180/7=25 5/7=25.7142857142857142857...
By the way, did anyone notice a funny thing about 1/7, 2/7 and so on? There are always the same 6 decimals repeated over and over again... 14 28 57 14 28 57... It just starts at different places, like 2/7=0.28 57 14 28 57..., 6/7=0.8 57 14 28 57.... and so on. Besides 14×2=28, 28×2=57 (almost...), 57×2=114 (there's the 14 again). Well, never mind... I am just too tired now so I'd better go to sleep...
Johnny at 03:31(yes, ISO 8601 international standard time format which nobody seems to use except me and a few more people...) - beep
Zzzzzzz...
Carl Paulsen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> skrev den Thu, 05 May 2005 10:58:02 -0400:
Hmmm. I didn't mean to start one holy war, much less three of them. I should be more careful.
FWIW (and for those still following this tangent), I agree with Johnny that we should all go to the metric system, and I do realize I can learn it, that it's much easier, etc. I don't so much mind change (I did, after all, make the switch to OO, and in fact, I went from some PC word software back in 1983 or so to the early Mac, back to PC, to Word, back to Word for Mac, to Office for PC, to Claris/Apple Works on Mac, to Office on PC, to Word Perfect Office on PC to OO on both the Mac and PC). It's more that it's not so easy to make metric divisions work with "imperial" layouts. All the more so when you're limited to two decimal places. The issue of labels brought up by another poster is where this kind of issue is particularly acute. And it might be just one small issue that works against more broad adoption of OO.
Anyway, I know I can even handle that problem, so this is more a theoretical or hypothetical discussion for me - and maybe just a gripe session, so I'll stop now.
Carl
Johnny Andersson wrote:
I like wars, can I be a part of these ones..? ;D
About paper sizes, just a question of curiosity: How does the letter size work? The A sizes are easy to understand.
A0=1 m² and height/width=SquareRoot(2) A1=A0 cut in the middle=1/2 m², height/width=SquareRoot(2) A2=1/4 m², still height/width=(2) and so on...
So height(A(n))=width(A(n-1)), width(A(n))=height(A(n-1))/2.
Simple mathematics. So tell me about the Letter format.
As Carl said (indirectly), the metric system is more logical then the imperial one, but the one you are used to is stil the easiest one to handle, just because you are used to it. But you can get used to just about everything, just if you want to. A couple of years scientists thought that it's harder to learn when you get older but now they found that that is not correct. The problem seems to be that older people are not that willing to learn new things. We (me included, I am 39 soon) think that we don't have to learn so much more or tired are tired of learning, but if we find something to be very interesting and we really want to learn about it, we learn it very fast! Take me as an example. I was a MS Office user and I learned to do VB macros and when I switched to OpenOffice I thought that "Oh no... do I have to learn all this all over again?". So for a couple of years I just ignored it and tried to do the best of it without using any macros, but finally I thought I would give it at try and I found it not to be as hard as I thought. The hardest thing about it is all the searching for existing functions and methods and information about how to use them and all those annoying mails to this mailing list I wrote when I couldn't get the answers myself, but I learned all the time... So, back to the metric system, sooner or later you will get used to it (if you want to) and than you will find out how easy it is! Most people in the world use the metric system these days (I think, if I'm wrong, please tell me more about this), even in British TV they use metrics, as far as I have seen anyway.
If you think that "the millimeter scale get's a bit scrunched up on the ruler" I agree with you, but then we can get use of the metrics' logical kind of nature: Use cm for the rulers! Looks great and easy to recalculate: Just multiply cm with 10 to get it in mm.
Maybe we should file that mm ruler thing as an issue. It COULD be made more readable than it is today. In my case it shows (in mm) 6 12 18 24 and so on, so there are 6 mm between each number. Maybe 20 mm would look much better. It could look something like this:
0 . | . 20 . | . 40 . | . 60 . | . 80 . | . 100. | . and so on...
And if you zoom, maybe you could get more detailed information, like: 0....|....10...|....20...|....30...|....40...|....and so on.
And Carl, I agree with you about top vs. bottom posting and the reason for that is what you already said.
If everybody agreed with everything, what is there to discuss? Wouldn't that be very boring? :D
And yes, about the original topic, an option for more decimals? Sure, why not? If the user only want one or two decimals, well just let him set the number of decimals to 1 or 2. If he wants 19 decimals, why stop him? So I would probably vote for a feature like that.
I was very surprised some years ago when I discovered that OpenOffice can work with mm, since MS Office (97 and 2000, I have not had any later releases installed on my computer) only allowed cm with 2 decimals or was it only 1? However I often found that I needed one more decimal than there was, so when I tried that in OpenOffice and selected mm, I thought I would lose one decimal and get the same resolution as when selecting cm, but I didn't! There is 2 decimals wether I select cm or mm! However the last decimal will not always be what I set it to. If I type something like 58,00 ("," is used as decimal character in my language, not "."), click OK and then go back, it might be set to 57,99 or something like that, but it doesn't bother me much. A 0,01 mm error can't be detected with my eyes anyway.
Have a nica day, everyone!
Johnny
Keith Bates <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> skrev den Thu, 5 May 2005 09:38:03 +1000:
Gee Carl
You're a brave man starting two (or maybe three) holy wars in one post:
* top vs. bottom posting * metric vs. imperial * paper sizes.
Keith
On Wed, 04 May 2005 13:56:17 -0400 Carl Paulsen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Ah. But when the paper size is in inches and you want to break that up into specific increments, it's much easier to do so with the (relatively) clean 8.5" or 11" sizes instead of the 16_??? millimeter size - note that the millimeter scale get's a bit scrunched up on the ruler, and is not a pretty sight to work from. For instance, tabs at 0.5 inches work well on standard Letter size paper. When one is used to a certain system, no matter how illogical that system is it is it is still usually easy to work with (particularly if you've ever been a carpenter ;-) ).
What bugs me - but it's admittedly not a big deal - is the "feature" that forces margin, indent, etc. adjustments using the up and down arrows increment by .02". If you've got a 1.0" margin and you want a 0.75" margin, you have to type in the new margin b/c incrementing by 0.02 will never get to .75" from 1.0". OK, again, not a big deal - I'm not making a feature request - it's just a pet peeve.
Carl
PS. Sorry if you're bugged by top posting but it just seems to make much more sense to me. Much easier to read the next reply than scrolling down to wherever the next reply starts on a bottom post.
Dan Lewis wrote:
>On Wednesday 04 May 2005 06:34 am, Peter Hillier-Brook wrote: > > >>John Hardy wrote: >> >> >>>Hello; >>> >>>There are many places where a dimension must be set, such as >>>margins, tab stops, indents, line spacing, grid spacing, etc. But >>>OO only provides two decimal places. This is very limiting. A >>>simple dimension of .125" or .375" cannot be specified, ending up >>>as .13" and .38" respectively. Forget about a sixteenth of an inch >>>(.0625"), since it requires four decimal places. The only way to >>>achieve higher precision is to change to millimeters or points, >>>which are much smaller units of measurement to begin with, so two >>>decimal places can describe a much smaller increment. But the user >>>should be able to work in his or her preferred unit of measurement. >>> >>>I would like to see as many as six decimal places. It can't be all >>>that hard to add this capability. Thank you. >>> >>> >>Good thinking! This is really necessary for people who can count >>beyond 10:-) I'll certainly vote for any issue addressing this >>requirement. >> >>Peter HB >> >> >> > What is wrong with learning to use what is already there? As I > have >mentioned in an earlier post, making changes in hundredths of a >millimeter is the same as making a change of 0.0003937 inches by >definition. I live in the US where inches, etc. are the accepted >measure, but I have learned to use the metric system in OOo when I >need to do so. It is not that hard when you stop worrying about >converting from one system to the other. The results are always >based upon how far along whatever ruler you are using that you want >to move. The numbers on that ruler are important, but the names of >the units associated with those numbers are not. For example, if you >want to more from 3" to 5" on a ruler measured in inches, you do the >same thing as if you wanted to move from 3 cm to 5 cm on a ruler >measured in cm. In each case you would move from the 3 to the 5. > >Dan
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