Hi,

John Culleton writes:

How do I change the rulers to measure in inches? The instructions in the manual are obsolete, and the gimprc file has no reference that I can find to the units of measure for the rulers.

The instructions in the manual are obsolete? What manual? When it comes to units, GIMP-2.0 behaves exactly like GIMP-1.2. As long as View->Dot for Dot is choosen, the rulers show pixels, if Dot-for-Dot mode is turned off, all lenghts are displayed in the image's unit.

Sven

Hi John,

John Culleton wrote:

The "Gimp Users Manual" is huge and hugely useful. But as the product continues to grow and change some update or addendum will be needed. "Grokking the Gimp" is more up to date but is also obsolete. An addendum would be easiest to prepare because it could be based on the change history.

Yes - and unfortunately, the original authors of the GUM, as well as the author of Grokking the GIMP, are no longer with us. The gimp-help-2 project is an effort to re-do the GUM from scratch (more or less) and update it to GIMP 2.0.

The ongoing result of that work is online at http://www.kuhcampus.de/~roman/gimp-help-2/C/

I do recognize the size of the effort involved. If someone furnishes me raw text and graphics I can do the typesetting.

I'm not clear on what you're offerring here - but the offer is appreciated. Are you proposing typesetting if (eventually) the new manual is looking for a publisher?

Cheers, Dave.

Le jeu 11/03/2004 à 14:58, Dave Neary a écrit :

Yes - and unfortunately, the original authors of the GUM, as well as the author of Grokking the GIMP, are no longer with us.

Are you sure for Carey Bunks ? I meet him last summer in Metz (RMLL2003) and he is always addicted to Gimp.

@+ Raymond

raymond ostertag wrote:

Le jeu 11/03/2004 à 14:58, Dave Neary a écrit :

Yes - and unfortunately, the original authors of the GUM, as well as the author of Grokking the GIMP, are no longer with us.

Are you sure for Carey Bunks ? I meet him last summer in Metz (RMLL2003) and he is always addicted to Gimp.

Yup. But he doesn't hang around here any more (at least I haven't seen him on any of the user forums) - I haven't heard of any plans to update grokking either. Hope I'm wrong, though - CAREY!!!

Cheers, Dave.

Hi,

John Culleton writes:

How do I change the rulers to measure in inches? The instructions in the manual are obsolete, and the gimprc file has no reference that I can find to the units of measure for the rulers.

The instructions in the manual are obsolete? What manual? When it comes to units, GIMP-2.0 behaves exactly like GIMP-1.2. As long as View->Dot for Dot is choosen, the rulers show pixels, if Dot-for-Dot mode is turned off, all lenghts are displayed in the image's unit.

Sven

I love the Gimp. However, yesterday, on my daughter's new Vista laptop, I used the rulers to pull guide lines to a blank page to replicate an Avery business card template. Managed to create the first card, then, copy/paste it as appropriate to populate the template. My printer is in the basement, so, rather than carry her laptop downstairs, load a new printer driver onto it, just to print her cards, I had her email me the xcf file which I opened in GIMP 2.6 on my machine. We constructed the template with the rulers showing inches, but on my machine, they are showing something else (I don't know what).

I followed your suggestion and turned off dot for dot, but no change in the rulers. I can bring up the Preferences-Units "window", and there are listed a selection of units, all of which are checked. Unchecking these or rechecking them seem to have no effect on the ruler display. Can you explain to me what I am missing.

Also, although I was meticulous in measuring for and laying out the template, my cards did not line up with the pre-cut forms that we had purchased.

I had spent the better part of two hours on this little project, and we were running out of time, so, I opened Adobe InDesign with which I am very familiar and completed the project from scratch in about 15 minutes.

That is not to knock Gimp. I knew from the start that Gimping the project was the long way around - but I wanted the experience. I feel I was almost there, but would appreciate further help on this ruler business. Without units in inches on the ruler, I was consigned to start from scratch in Gimp, but, even if I had had time, the units showing were not familiar to me (very large numbers, 1500, etc.).

Sorry to be lengthy, and thanks in advance for any advice.

(my first forum post!)

Caruso

Carusoswi wrote:

I had her email me the xcf file which I opened in GIMP 2.6 on my machine. We constructed the template with the rulers showing inches, but on my machine, they are showing something else (I don't know what).

Hi

The unit of the rulers is the same as the unit in the bottom of the image window, in the left part of the statusbar.

The unit you used to display the image is not saved to the file, so when you open the file on another computer (or the same computer) the unit of the window will default to pixels. One could argue that the unit used to display the file should be saved, but it is not trivial to solve since one image can be shown using different units in different image windows.

In any case, to show the rulers in inches on your machine, just change the unit in the statusbar to inches.

BR, Martin

Carusoswi writes:

Also, although I was meticulous in measuring for and laying out the template, my cards did not line up with the pre-cut forms that we had purchased.

Martin already answered your questions about units, so I'll just address this part. I've done business cards and labels in gimp (http://shallowsky.com/software/gimplabels/) and they can line up if you get the distances right.

You have to make sure you have an image that matches the size of your paper, and get the offsets right, of course. I've tried to do labels where I made the image size match up to the outer edges of the outer labels, then set the offsets in gutenprint, and it was frustrating and never worked right.

I've only printed with gutenprint, where it's easy to see when you're printing a full page with zero margins on any corner. I couldn't get the same amount of control through gtkprint, though it's gotten a *lot* better in the last few releases and maybe it would work now. Another option, if you have trouble with gtkprint not lining up, is to print to postscript or PDF, preview it to make sure the page size and margins are what you expect, then print that from another app.

Also, my inkjet printer (YMMV) varies quite a lot from page to page, so even if I create a perfect template at the perfect size, printed labels may not register exactly with the label sheet. So you need to make sure any text doesn't go all the way out to the edges of the label, and that any background is wide enough to spill over the edges quite a bit. Drawing a neat box just inside the edges is right out, unfortunately. Maybe some printers are better at that.

That is not to knock Gimp. I knew from the start that Gimping the project was the long way around - but I wanted the experience. I feel I was almost

That's exactly the right attitude. There are lots of apps designed for printing labels and business cards, but I like having the option of making them in GIMP because it gives me the option of printing at high quality and high resolution. I always keep in mind that this isn't really what gimp is for, so if I have to do a little extra fiddling compared to glabels, it's my choice.

...Akkana

Carusoswi writes:

Also, although I was meticulous in measuring for and laying out the

template,

my cards did not line up with the pre-cut forms that we had purchased.

Martin already answered your questions about units, so I'll just address this part. I've done business cards and labels in gimp (http://shallowsky.com/software/gimplabels/) and they can line up if you get the distances right.

You have to make sure you have an image that matches the size of your paper, and get the offsets right, of course. I've tried to do labels where I made the image size match up to the outer edges of the outer labels, then set the offsets in gutenprint, and it was frustrating and never worked right.

I've only printed with gutenprint, where it's easy to see when you're printing a full page with zero margins on any corner. I couldn't get the same amount of control through gtkprint, though it's gotten a *lot* better in the last few releases and maybe it would work now. Another option, if you have trouble with gtkprint not lining up, is to print to postscript or PDF, preview it to make sure the page size and margins are what you expect, then print that from another app.

Also, my inkjet printer (YMMV) varies quite a lot from page to page, so even if I create a perfect template at the perfect size, printed labels may not register exactly with the label sheet. So you need to make sure any text doesn't go all the way out to the edges of the label, and that any background is wide enough to spill over the edges quite a bit. Drawing a neat box just inside the edges is right out, unfortunately. Maybe some printers are better at that.

That is not to knock Gimp. I knew from the start that Gimping the

project

was the long way around - but I wanted the experience. I feel I was

almost

That's exactly the right attitude. There are lots of apps designed for printing labels and business cards, but I like having the option of making them in GIMP because it gives me the option of printing at high quality and high resolution. I always keep in mind that this isn't really what gimp is for, so if I have to do a little extra fiddling compared to glabels, it's my choice.

...Akkana

The rules use the same units as the ones you choose in the bottom in the Image window.

Hi,

On Sun, 2009-03-22 at 20:12 +0100, Carusoswi wrote:

Not certain on this board how to truncate quoted text, so, I'll just leave it all in.

Please understand that you are writing to a mailing-list. You are not on some board (even though you are accessing the list through such an interface). On this list there are rules, please respect them:

http://gimp.org/mail_lists.html

I must have missed Martin's reply on changing the units on my ruler, because I cannot find it. If you could guide me or reiterate, I would be most appreciative.

The mailing-list is archived. You can use this archive to check for mails you may have missed:

http://lists.xcf.berkeley.edu/lists/gimp-user/2009-March/014421.html

Sven

Carusoswi writes:

Also, although I was meticulous in measuring for and laying out the

template,

my cards did not line up with the pre-cut forms that we had purchased.

Martin already answered your questions about units, so I'll just address this part. I've done business cards and labels in gimp (http://shallowsky.com/software/gimplabels/) and they can line up if you get the distances right.

You have to make sure you have an image that matches the size of your paper, and get the offsets right, of course. I've tried to do labels where I made the image size match up to the outer edges of the outer labels, then set the offsets in gutenprint, and it was frustrating and never worked right.

I've only printed with gutenprint, where it's easy to see when you're printing a full page with zero margins on any corner. I couldn't get the same amount of control through gtkprint, though it's gotten a *lot* better in the last few releases and maybe it would work now. Another option, if you have trouble with gtkprint not lining up, is to print to postscript or PDF, preview it to make sure the page size and margins are what you expect, then print that from another app.

Also, my inkjet printer (YMMV) varies quite a lot from page to page, so even if I create a perfect template at the perfect size, printed labels may not register exactly with the label sheet. So you need to make sure any text doesn't go all the way out to the edges of the label, and that any background is wide enough to spill over the edges quite a bit. Drawing a neat box just inside the edges is right out, unfortunately. Maybe some printers are better at that.

That is not to knock Gimp. I knew from the start that Gimping the

project

was the long way around - but I wanted the experience. I feel I was

almost

That's exactly the right attitude. There are lots of apps designed for printing labels and business cards, but I like having the option of making them in GIMP because it gives me the option of printing at high quality and high resolution. I always keep in mind that this isn't really what gimp is for, so if I have to do a little extra fiddling compared to glabels, it's my choice.

...Akkana

Did I do something wrong here? Yesterday, I posted a message stating that I had, indeed, succeeded in making the ruler show inches instead of pixels or whatever. For some reason, that message has not shown up on the thread. In any event, turning off the dot to dot did the trick for the ruler in a new file, but I remain puzzled as to why I cannot get the file that I created on my daughter's computer, where Gimp's ruler was already showing inches, to open showing inches on my machine (we emailed that file to transfer it from her machine to mine).

Could still use some advice on that issue, if anyone can offer any suggestions.

Thanks again for previously offered advice.

Caruso

Carusoswi wrote:

Did I do something wrong here? Yesterday, I posted a message stating that I had, indeed, succeeded in making the ruler show inches instead of pixels or whatever. For some reason, that message has not shown up on the thread. In any event, turning off the dot to dot did the trick for the ruler in a new file, but I remain puzzled as to why I cannot get the file that I created on my daughter's computer, where Gimp's ruler was already showing inches, to open showing inches on my machine (we emailed that file to transfer it from her machine to mine).

Could still use some advice on that issue, if anyone can offer any suggestions.

The unit used in the rulers is the unit specified in the status bar of the Image window, whatever it is. This is has nothing to do with the image itself, nor the dot for dot mode.

On Mon, Mar 30, 2009 at 2:07 AM, Carusoswi wrote:

Did I do something wrong here? Yesterday, I posted a message stating that I had, indeed, succeeded in making the ruler show inches instead of pixels or whatever.  For some reason, that message has not shown up on the thread.  In any event, turning off the dot to dot did the trick for the ruler in a new file, but I remain puzzled as to why I cannot get the file that I created on my daughter's computer, where Gimp's ruler was already showing inches, to open showing inches on my machine (we emailed that file to transfer it from her machine to mine).

Yes, you did do something wrong. You used the gimpusers 'gimp-user' forum, which is a officially disapproved, bastardized interface to the real gimp-user mailing list. That forum (and the other mailing-list interface forums available there) is unreliable, troublesome, and was created in direct contradiction to the wishes of the GIMP developers. In particular, people on the forum have found messages posted here on the gimp-user mailing list sometimes do not appear in the forums. Perhaps that also includes some posts made from the forums.

Please switch from using the gimpusers.com forums to a subscription to the genuine mailing list. It will be much more reliable for both you and us.

http://www.gimp.org/mail_lists.html

Thanks.

David

PS. Actually, I thought we'd already addressed this issue of ruler units; at least I remember a reply quite like Oliviers.