Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!decwrl!adobe!heaven!glenn
From: glenn@heaven.woodside.ca.us (Glenn Reid)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.postscript
Subject: Re: 72.27! (was Re: ruler.ps - an inch/point ruler of your very own)
Message-ID: <131@heaven.COM>
Date: 3 Feb 90 06:15:43 GMT
References: <137@macuni.mqcc.mq.oz> <9001220213.aa05139@blackbox.gore.com> <152@macuni.mqcc.mq.oz> <128@heaven.COM> <846@tuewsd.lso.win.tue.nl>
Reply-To: glenn@heaven.UUCP (Glenn Reid)
Organization: Glenn Reid (at home), NeXT, Inc.
Lines: 31

In article <846@tuewsd.lso.win.tue.nl> wsinkees@lso.win.tue.nl (Kees Huizing) writes:
+glenn@heaven.woodside.ca.us (Glenn Reid) writes:
+
++	.352778 dup scale	% I may have this inverted :-)
+
++Now you can think in millimeters (or in your case, millimetres).  The "point"
++(or a close approximation thereof) was chosen for convenience to the
++typesetting industry, to whom a 4.2334 millimeter font means nothing.
+
+This is NOT the way to do it, unfortunately.  Everything will be scaled:
+linewidth, font sizes, etc.
+Instead, you have to do something like
+
+	/cm {UNIT mul} def 	% or bind def perhaps?
+
+where UNIT is the appropriate conversion factor.  And then you have to write
+"cm" after every measuring value :-(  Thanks to Adobe who apparently didn't
+realise that postscript brought printing from the typesetting industry to
+the office, where people use ordinary rulers.

That's not right.  If the problem is that you want to think in millimeters
instead of points, then you should refer to line weights and fonts and
everything else in millimeters, right?  If you want to measure in inches,
then you say "72 72 scale" at the beginning, and everything now works in
inches (or fractions thereof).

Ordinary office rulers don't have anything to do with this, do they?  If
you adjust the scale factor appropriately, you can pretend to be working
in any system you like.

Glenn