Graphic Rulers - Actual Inches?

[Wickerman]

Okay, this ought to be a simple one, but I'm really puzzled. In layout Mode, I'm "Viewing" Graphical Rulers along the top and side, and determining how large a frame I want to use for a new database. I'm viewing the rulers in "Inches" at the moment, and I'm in 100% mode according to the display at the lower left of the window.

So . . . why does an "inch" on the ruler measure only about 3/4 of an inch on my actual computer screen? -- I'm measuring it with a physical ruler. I note that Centimeters are similarly shrunken.

If my client wants the window to be 12" wide, it seems I need to make it 15+" according to the ruler to fill 12" of real estate on my monitor.

What am I missing here?

Albert

[databaser]

I don't think it can be set, relative to your computer screen.

If you were to print, however, I think you'd be quite impressed on how accurate those inch measurements are.

i've honestly never even heard of any computer program being able to know the actual size that something would appear on you computer screen.

OR,

maybe if you used a different resolution, it would be real inches. i don't know

BUT, i think the purpose of that, is for printing - it's supposed to be very accurate when you print (I used to use filemaker to print on my checks, for example. And when i would apply a ruler to my checks to set it up, i noticed filemaker was perfectly precise.)

but yea, i've never even heard of computer screen distance being measure in anything other than pixels, as far as software is concerned.

[Wickerman]

Ahhhhh . . . I see -- so what I need is the client's screen size in Pixels. Duh!

thanks,

Albert

[Fenton]

The size of a pixel is relative to the display settings of the computer. I have a 20" iMac. It runs normally at a Display resolution of 1680x1050. I can change that to something else though.

To know what 12" is on his screen, tell the client to put a ruler on his screen, while showing the Text Ruler in a wide FileMaker window, with Layout, Set Rulers... set to Pixels.

On mine 12" = 1200 pixels (100px/in, no wonder everything seems kind of small :-). Whereas if I change the display resolution to 1280x800, 12" is only 920 pixels.

[comment]

On a Mac, an inch is supposed to equal 72 pixels. However, since one can set the screen resolution to almost anything, 72 pixels are not always displayed as one inch.

If you know the screen size and the resolution being used, you can compute how many pixels it will take to get a "screen inch". Using the numbers from Fenton's example:

Resolution: 1680 x 1050 px

Screen Diagonal: 20"

Pixels along the diagonal = Sqrt ( 1680^2 + 1050^2 ) = 1981.14 px

Pixels per inch = 1981.14 px / 20" = 99.06 px/inch

So to get something that will be 12" wide on the screen, you need to make it 1189 pixels (or 16.5 "virtual inches") wide. However, it will display as 12" wide only as long as the screen size and resolution remain unchanged.

[Richard Rönnbäck]

I have worked in the print publishing business, where this is one of the most asked questions, for 20 years.

So to spare you some time here is what is boils down to:

1) There is no real solution

2) If you design for accurate size when printing you use traditional measurement units such as inches, centimetres etc.

3) If you design for accurate AMOUNT OF INFORMATION when viewed on screen you can use points, which are the closet equivalent to pixels. You then target a certain amount of pixels/point, for example 1024x768

The problem with screens is that there is no way of knowing what physical size the end user's screen is or what resolution (pixel density) they are using.

Web designers deal with this problem all the time, and their "solution" is usually to design for a certain resolution and let the user deal with the fact that it will display smaller or bigger than on some other computers screend. What they do know however is that the same amount of information will be displayed