Apache OpenOffice Community Forum

I imploringly hope to find a bit more help here than I did on IRC How to set the measurement to PIXELS. At

TOOLS > OPTIONS ... OpenOffice.org Impress -> General :: Unit of measurement:

THERE IS NO PIXEL... What now?

Well, a pixel is not really a unit in itself except for a digital picture. A presentation is to be printed or laid out based on a sheet format. But how many pixels is a page for you???

1 Pixel is one Pixel. What in the world do you mean? Assuming the whole layout is measured in pixels and the page is sized to 600x400px one pixel will subsequently be a 1/600 of the width of the page.

It's simple - isn't it? Frankly you sound like you have never measured in pixels. Though I admit that this certainly requires a DPI-Setting for printing.

No, except for pictures, I've never measured in pixels, you're right. A page is not X x Y pixels, because it depends on the DPI setting as you've said.

Well then, let me introduce you to pixel measurement as known from chiefly all other programs in the world
NORMALLY a document is based upon a specific DPI-Value which is set application wide. Now sizes can be seen either way:

Pixels = DPI * Realsize * Conversionratio_Realsize2Inch
vice versa:
Realsize = Pixels / DPI / Conversionratio_Realsize2Inch

Now depending on what the user prefers sizes are either displayed in realunits or in pixels. C pareil

Sure, but for a presentation, I still don't see the point. Who speaks in pixels for a presentation (except you of course)?

I've found that request for Draw and Writer/web, which is logical in those cases, you should subscribe and vote for it (up to 2 votes per issue) : Issue 35835 - Pixels should be a measurement unit for Draw / Writer(Web). Add a comment to add that feature to Impress also and wait for the devs reply.

As regards your first point: Its absoluty the same. I don't see any difference between saying "The element is ... inches in width" and saying "The element is ... pixels in width". Neither really gives one an idea of how large the element actually is. If I use the freaking presentation in which a box is said to be "2 inches" in width on a projector the 2 inches will suddely be 10 inches on the screen. And if I use the same presentation on a screen it will depend on the resolution of the monitor as the whole thing gets scaled so it fits the monitor. The box will never be really "2 inches" if I put a ruler to it and take its length!!!

But as regards PIXLES that is fully another story. It's far easier to comprehend a layout if you zoom in your presentation to literally "100%" and 10 pixels mean 10 pixels in reality. Reason for me to demand all this is that I came into trouble with the realsize settings when setting the width of a line. I wanted to be EXACTLY 1 pixel in width on my screen because if its not exactly 1 px portions of the line (may this be owing to a faulty setup - i dunno) will disappear because of a horrible dithering/sampling. Same with setting to a width of 2 "pixels": Some parts are 3px while some are hardly 2 - IF its not exactly 2px.

Now as you can hopefully see using inches as measurement isnt satisfying since I cannot zoom in to "100%" neither can I set the width of a line so it matches a even number of pixels in reality.

But quite often, the presentation is to be printed on a real paper this time. Hence when you set your layout, you need to have the real measurements.

Though you are absolutly right in saying that there is need for a grasp conversion from Screen-Size to Real-Size I think this does not negate the existance of a measurement in pixels. If someone (for any reason - such as wanting print the material) prefers to view the dimensions as Real-Size Units, he can do so - and all sizes will be displayed as Real-Size according to the DPI. But as the WORK is done on a computer and not on a sheet of paper I'd say that at least the option to view all sizes in terms of virtual units is absolutly indispensable!

In this electronic day and age, how much of the IMPRESS work is being done to get printed, v.s. shown on a screen.

All of my PowerPoint and now Impress work is for display on a screen. Usually for display on a projector.
I really don't care ( and some cases don't know) the size in inches of the image, what I really care about is Pixels.
Modern display devices have an optimum display resolution, usually their native resolution. I would like to work with Impress in a pixel based system so i really know how it is going to look on screen.

Most web stuff these days works in pixels too, it is just the old fogies who must print stuff on dead trees who think in inches (or cm, furlongs au, etc...)

How is that for a reason to have the ability to work in pixels?

We're not the developers, just users trying to help other users. The developers don't hang out here.

As Hagar said above, register onthe bug tracking site (it isn't anything do with this site, so you must re-register) and vote for this issue: Issue 35835 - Pixels should be a measurement unit for Draw / Writer(Web). Also add a note that you want it to apply to Impress too. Votes are one of the things taken into account when the fixes/features for future versions are decided.

Pixel is not a measurement unit in any measuring system, consequently in decent software not use it.
What happens if you draw a 20 pixel line in 640X480 and try to use in 1200x800 pixel monitor, it will be different.
Both monitor can be different in phisical size, from netbook to giant TV.
If you draw a 2cm long line it will be same in all monitors even print is out same size.

Another argument against it, Impress use Draw drawing engine which is a vector graphics program.
Not use pixels when drawing a line, only you gives two coordinates for endpoints, and line between,it is much smaller footprint in memory and disk and much faster, than drawing line pixel by pixel in any pixel graphics system like Paint on win.
Try to save any odg file as BMP format, 10kb file saves as 2MB.

I agree that pixel measurement is sometimes useful. That would be in image editing and sometimes for web page layouts (and possibly a few other applications). In screen presentation software, using pixel measurement would more often confuse things, so I understand why it's not been implemented there.

The bottom line: if you need pixel wise control, use a tool that offers it. (AFAIK, all image editors do, and many web page editors too, and no OOo application does.)

I agree that pixel measurement, too.
Page settings for Draw, Impress, Writer.

Have you voted for the request? Up to 2 votes per issue, it's the only way to speed up things.

Here's why I need pixel-based dimensions...

I'm creating a video with Camtasia using specific pixel-based HD dimension 1280 x 720. Since I don't have pixel control, Impress plays the slide show in full screen at 1920 x 1600.

Best,

wolfix

I also need to be able to set pixel size in my screen presentation, so that my images will be the right size. You may not need them if you have lot of writing, but if you do art presentation as I do, 50/100 slides with images formatted to fit the cm size setted in Impress will need too much RAM! Also, I use two pc and one is 16/9 (1366x768), but presentation will always be on a 1024x768 screen. A bigger resolution is just a waste of memory...
I will do a web site instead!

Possible workarounds for Camtasia:
Some screen drivers offer the option of settin up a portion of the screen as a "virtual screen". If you can set up a virtual screen to your desired resolution, it's possible to have Impress sending the presentation to that and also Camtasia recording from that.

Save as a MS Powerpoint file. I believe Camtasia has an option to convert a ppt file to video. With any luck, it will work and it will give you control of image resolution.

Show presentation in window instead of full screen. Slide Show - Slide Show Settings, set Type=Window.
Resize the window so the main pane is your desired size, and select that as the recording area for Camtasia.

I haven't got Camtasia installed now, so in the above I'm referring to what I remember from using it. I apologize if I recall wrongly.