Bug 111254

Summary:	Desire on-screen ruler functionality
Product:	[Applications] okular	Reporter:	Daniel Herring <dherring>
Component:	general	Assignee:	Okular developers <okular-devel>
Status:	REPORTED ---
Severity:	wishlist	CC:	bugs.kde.org, home1, null, tim, xavier, yousifjkadom
Priority:	NOR
Version First Reported In:	unspecified
Target Milestone:	---
Platform:	Slackware
OS:	Linux
Latest Commit:		Version Fixed In:
Sentry Crash Report:

Description Daniel Herring 2005-08-22 02:37:55 UTC

Version:            (using KDE KDE 3.4.2)
Installed from:    Slackware Packages

PDF documents are a powerful tool for achieving on-screen representations which are faithful to the printed page.  Sometimes, I desire the ability to get accurate measurements of on-screen spaces before printing.  For example, to make sure a page heading meets some specification.

To aid this, ruler-bars on the top and side of the display screen would be very helpful.  These would be more useful than external tools like KRuler since they could adjust to match the exact scaling of the document being displayed.  As an added feature, I would like to place marks on these rulers which would extend a straight line across the page.  This would assist in checking alignment.

A related feature would be a new tool (in addition to the normal, zoom, and select tools) which would display the cursor's current physical coordinates on the page.  For example (2.6in,5.2in) might hover next to the cursor.  A click-and-drag might display the linear distance between the clicked point and the cursor's current position.

Thanks for your consideration.

Comment 1 Albert Astals Cid 2009-08-27 00:12:15 UTC

KPDF is no longer under development, as i think this feature still makes sense in Okular (KPDF successor) i'm moving the wish there, but don't take this as a promise we are working on it.

Comment 2 Albert Astals Cid 2011-07-10 21:08:24 UTC

*** Bug 155737 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 3 Albert Astals Cid 2012-03-08 22:31:51 UTC

*** Bug 161811 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 4 Laura David Hurka 2020-10-23 14:49:30 UTC

*** Bug 380154 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 5 jack_sprat 2023-10-10 22:13:58 UTC

Hi,
I'm voting in support of Daniel's final proposal: the linear measurement tool.
Interpreting PDF's of maps, graphs, plans &c. often benefits from being able to extract scaled dimensions.
I propose that such a click-and-drag tool context menu would allow it to be 'calibrated'  with some training values (from the graph or map axes, or plan scale bars, for instance) - and then remain true as the PDF is zoomed in/out.
Context menu would allow user to select linear/area/angular dimension options.
A further context menu feature would allow the measured value to be inserted as an annotation.

C'mon, it would be a beauty, don't you think?

As an example, look at the 'measure line/area/bearing/angle' tool in QGIS

thanks for listening - best wishes - JS

Comment 6 jack_sprat 2023-10-10 22:18:42 UTC

(with correction)
Hi,
I'm voting in support of Daniel's final proposal: the linear measurement tool.
Interpreting PDF's of maps, graphs, plans &c. often benefits from being able to extract scaled dimensions.
I propose that such a click-and-drag tool's context menu would allow it to be 'calibrated' with some training values (from the graph or map axes, or plan scale bars, for instance) - and then remain true as the PDF is zoomed in/out.
The context menu would allow user to select linear/area/angular dimension options.
A further context menu feature would allow the measured value to be inserted as an annotation.

C'mon, it would be a beauty, don't you think?
 
 As an example, look at the 'measure line/area/bearing/angle' tool in QGIS

 thanks for listening - best wishes - JS