zune@lysator.liu.se (Andreas Magnusson) (04/30/91)
Well, I was writing my report on Word 4.0 (US version) when I thought that I would like to have tabs spaced on centimetres. Though luck! I noticed that when I set a tab as near 1 cm as possible, it became 0,9968 or something like this. I have noticed this in the Swedish version too. Why doesn't Word like cm ? Is it quickdraw, or just because the US still uses inches? Can anyone shine some light on this question? /Andreas
dana@are.berkeley.edu (Dana E. Keil) (05/01/91)
zune@lysator.liu.se (Andreas Magnusson) writes: >I was writing my report on Word 4.0 (US version) when I thought that I >would like to have tabs spaced on centimetres. Though luck! >I noticed that when I set a tab as near 1 cm as possible, it became 0,9968 >or something like this. I have noticed this in the Swedish version too. >Why doesn't Word like cm ? Is it quickdraw, or just because the US still uses >inches? Word does the same thing to inches most of the time. Change your preferences to inches and you'll see it do the same as it does to cm -- 2" becomes 1.988" and so forth. No one is really why this is but there are those who believe that there is a proprietary measurement system (Microsoftmetres) in place in anticipation of the day when we a have one world government ruled by Bill Gates. ;-) -- Dana E. Keil Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics University of California, Berkeley dana@are.berkeley.edu
jeffe@eniac.seas.upenn.edu (george) (05/01/91)
:I noticed that when I set a tab as near 1 cm as possible, it became 0,9968 :or something like this. I have noticed this in the Swedish version too. Word rounds to an integer number of _points_ , in this case 28. 28 pts / 72 ppi * 2.54 cm/in = .9878 cm (which is what I got in Word btw) so we americans get messed up too. -- -george george@mech.seas.upenn.edu
weiss@watson.seas.ucla.edu (Michael Weiss) (05/01/91)
In article <dana.673046392@are.Berkeley.EDU> dana@are.berkeley.edu (Dana E. Keil) writes: >>Why doesn't Word like cm ? Is it quickdraw, or just because the US still uses >>inches? > >this is but there are those who believe that there is a >proprietary measurement system (Microsoftmetres) in place in >anticipation of the day when we a have one world government ruled >by Bill Gates. ;-) It has occurred to me that it may be that MSWD uses points rather than inches or centimeters or whatever. Does that seem perhaps to jibe with what you see? I have noticed the same thing before, except that it was worse. When you change the numbers a little bit, the numbers change a lot on the paper (IOW, it would move a lot farther than you had told it to move the margins). Neat, Huh? -- \ | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | / - Michael Weiss weiss@watson.seas.ucla.edu | School of Engineering and - - izzydp5@oac.ucla.edu | Applied Science, UCLA - / | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | \
stanger@otago.ac.nz (Nigel Stanger) (05/02/91)
In article <dana.673046392@are.Berkeley.EDU>, dana@are.berkeley.edu (Dana E. Keil) writes: > zune@lysator.liu.se (Andreas Magnusson) writes: > >>I was writing my report on Word 4.0 (US version) when I thought that I >>would like to have tabs spaced on centimetres. Though luck! >>I noticed that when I set a tab as near 1 cm as possible, it became 0,9968 >>or something like this. I have noticed this in the Swedish version too. >>Why doesn't Word like cm ? Is it quickdraw, or just because the US still uses >>inches? > > Word does the same thing to inches most of the time. Change your > preferences to inches and you'll see it do the same as it does > to cm -- 2" becomes 1.988" and so forth. No one is really why > this is but there are those who believe that there is a > proprietary measurement system (Microsoftmetres) in place in > anticipation of the day when we a have one world government ruled > by Bill Gates. ;-) It's really rather simple - by default, Word *actually* measures everything in points, and when you use something different it converts the measurements (correct me if I'm wrong, but that's the way I understood it). One point is 1/72" = 0.0138888888... In centimetres that is roughly 0.03472222... So, there you have it. I don't think Microsoft will be able to take over the world until it can convert between units better (perhaps I should crosspost this to alt.conspiracy? :-) -- See ya Nigel. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Nigel Stanger, Internet: stanger@otago.ac.nz c/o University of Otago, P.O. Box 56, Phone: +64 3 479-8179 Dunedin, NEW ZEALAND. Fax: +64 3 479-8311 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- "If I had a quote, I'd be wearing it." -- Bob Dylan ----------------------------------------------------------------------
kansy@gmdzi.gmd.de (Klaus Kansy) (05/02/91)
In article <605@lysator.liu.se> zune@lysator.liu.se (Andreas Magnusson) writes: > Why doesn't Word like cm ? Is it quickdraw, or just because the US still > uses inches? This is an round-off problem when converting between internal and external measures. The problem can be solved and effectively had been solved by Microsoft in version Word 1.0 but the knowledge seems to have been lost since that time. So development sometimes goes into the wrong direction. Btw this is not the only example. MSWord 1.0 was the only WYSIWYG text system I am aware of which supported correct tabs (correct means: n-th tab goes to n-th tab-position; if this position has been passed, just introduce a blank). In Word 3.0, Microsoft adopted the widespread but idiotic current solution (tab goes to next available tab-position). Regards Klaus Kansy, kansy@gmdzi.gmd.de German National Research Center for Computer Science (GMD) St. Augustin, Germany
kpottie@icarus.cs.kuleuven.ac.be (Pottie Karl) (05/03/91)
Word doesn't like centimetres, but it's not the only app: MacDraft 2.0 has some MAJOR problems when set to cm.