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The Great Screenshot Captor Ruler Debate Thread

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mouser:
I think we should approach this from the opposite angle.

Let's start out by saying that external ruler tools do this job fine, and so SC doesn't need one.
And then we can ask -- what *WOULD* be more useful?

That tasks do you use a ruler for -- can we add a tool to SC that would help you do that even more than a ruler would?  That's why i'm thinking along the lines of some custom mode, with a top info panel, and maybe a custom grid and crosshairs?  By custom grid i mean a grid where you could easily tweak the grid size and origin.
 

cmpm:
after some thought and time,
I was rude and my comments were not my best nature.
somebody give me a few shots of mouser diplomacy
i don't know how he does it

(i still think the benefit thread is appropriate though)

IainB:
...If people can tell me a good usecase for rulers i might implement them.
-mouser (May 07, 2013, 02:10 PM)
--- End quote ---
Well, quite coincidentally, last night I was doing some seriously careful clipping of SSC captures of scrolling images from my browser. The images were of pages of text from one of those sites that won't let you read more than a couple of pages of stuff without your joining their blasted website. The scrolling capture was really messy because of the proprietary display - SSC could not compensate for it, and there was a lot of duplicated text on either side of the "joins".
My task was to cut out (remove) the duplicate text. I was working at 200% zoom so as to cut out horizontal sections - sometimes cutting some of the lines of text. I wanted to leave the text looking as though it hadn't been cut and joined (invisible joins). After considerable repeated effort, I succeeded. It reminded me how very useful a tool SSC is.

As I was working on the page images though, I did wish for rulers in both axes. This was whilst I was cutting off extraneous borders that had been added to the top, bottom and side margins of the pages. I was trying to ensure that each page ended up as the same height and width. This was quite difficult to do without rulers, and I ended up having to do everything by eye (using my visual judgement). The results were OK, but imperfect and I only managed to get them approximately the same length and breadth - e.g., 788x1309, 785x1272, 785x1285 pixels. Rulers would probably have enabled me to get these spot-on.

This is the 2nd exercise where I have cut and spliced text horizontally with SSC, achieving an invisible join. It is the first time I have needed rulers for cutting to a specific size.

By the way, whilst I was working at 200% I was making much use of the zoomed pixel display, and even dragged it wider so I could spot the relative differences between top and bottom of the cuts, so as to judge when to cut to get an invisible join. It was whilst i was doing this that SSC drove me mad with frustration because the cutting box did not behave nicely and consistently as it should have done. Sometimes it plumb disappeared, or had a mind of its own and snapped back to its previous shape after being dragged to a new shape. Other times, the handles sort of floated in the air, like in this example:

mouser:
Thanks for the post Ian, seems a couple of different things here though.

It sounds like the rulers -- at least as i implemented them in the recent test (just along the top and side and not floating) would not have helped you.  Do you know about how the bottom statusbar of SC shows the current selection size? Would that have been what you wanted, to get an exact selection size?  You could have also saved the selection size so you could repeat it.  I'm sorry to be dense but i don't quite follow everything you are saying.

I do understand the basic task you are describing -- splicing out the overlaps of a scrolling capture on a page where it can't be done automatically.  but beyond that i didn't completely follow.

mouser:
I hate to beat a dead horse but i really do want to understand.  But when you say something like this:

As I was working on the page images though, I did wish for rulers in both axes...I was trying to ensure that each page ended up as the same height and width. This was quite difficult to do without rulers, and I ended up having to do everything by eye (using my visual judgement).

--- End quote ---

you have to understand that i don't get it.  i just don't understand how you are using the rulers, how they help, what you actually use them to do/see, whatever.  

right now when you make a selection it tells you the exact size of the selection.  I need someone to explain to me some concrete use cases for rulers so i can understand what purpose they solve.

everything i read here makes me think rulers are some magical sticks that you wave around an image and they magically make doing hard things super easy.

i'm not asking for someone to "prove" to me that they are useful, just explain to me how specifically they would be used in SC to help do some task so I can see if there isn't a better solution, or at the very least make sure that the rulers i implement serve this purpose.

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