Apache OpenOffice Community Forum

Hi,
On my 20" monitor 100% zoom factor shows the document a little bigger than actual size. Remaining zoom factors are off proportionally.
It's not really important as I can see real size by adjusting the Variable/custom zoom factor, but I wonder if there is a tweak that can correct the zooms to be true to their face value.

Open any other program that shows rulers. Hold a standard ruler to the screen and measure the displayed units. Is it exactly on measure? My bet is that it isn't. (I'm using Word because it's not OOo, is handy, it has plenty of files to test with, and its rulers are displayed. The "inches" in its ruler at 100% zoom in a maximized window on a 1024x768 display resolution are nearly an eighth of an inch wider than a true inch. If I change the zoom settings to, say, 87%, the rulers visibly change size when I use the "Restore down" and "Restore up" window tools. "Restore down" makes them proportionally smaller with the window, and "restore up" stretches them with the window. That doesn't happen in Writer, by the way.)

This demonstrates that the zoom factor and apparent document size on the display isn't an OOo thing but is how computer systems in general work.

There is no such thing as a "real size" in digital displays. Everything you see on the screen is a calculation and is proportioned by not only how the OS treats its calculations and rounding, but how the display drivers work, how the processor works, how the video adapters work, and so on. Video display is a complicated process. What you see as rulers on the display are provided for user convenience in visualising file elements in proportion to each other, simply guides and approximations to help users get their bearings with a file or object. The only "real" size is the printed version.

All that aside, I find that the closest I can come to a true "inch" measure on my display is 93% zoom.

foxcole wrote: This demonstrates that the zoom factor and apparent document size on the display isn't an OOo thing but is how computer systems in general work.

Yes, I know this isn't "an OOo thing" and anyway it couldn't be correct for everyone out of the box. As you say it depends on the resolution and the monitor used.
But somewhere in the program code the estimate is done to try an approximation to the real size. I thought I could tweak this with an error factor.
AutoCAD as such a variable and thus displays correct rulers at 100% zoom. Photoshop also could be corrected but has no easy setting, it involved going "under the hood".

These are of course design programs and dimensioning is important to design. But it's also valuable to know how big a 12p font really is, or if a letter address layout is really aligning well to the window on the envelope you're holding, or if you're trying to adjust a layout to go on a sheet of paper already printed with an image.

In my case, the closest I can come to a true centimetre measure on my display is 90% zoom.