XML editor units, could not enter data in mm anymore

[zutje]

It used to be possible to enter numbers in the XML editor in other than px units (e.g. 100mm) which would than be converted to px units. This behaviour of the editor is apparently not there anymore, but was highly appreciated at least by me, because I usually use the metric system for things like precision drawing of things, for which I now need to use a calculator again.

I don't know if this is intended behaviour, if it is, please ignore this as a bug report and add it as a feature request to be able to edit the XML in mm.

Yours sincerely,

 Tjeerd Pinkert

[jazzynico (jazzynico)]

Not reproduced on Ubuntu 9.04, Inkscape 0.46 and rev. 22180. The edited value is converted to px, but it works with other units.
Could you please test a recent dev version (http://sourceforge.net/projects/inkscape/files/inkscape/) and confirm you still have this bug?
Thanks!

[zutje (t-j-pinkert)]

running on Debian linux, inkscape version 0.46

Inkscape 0.46, built Apr 26 2009 (debian package: inkscape 0.46-9)

I find two things:
When I filed the bug (I had to think what it was about again) I especially had problems with the guides, which are in the sodipodi part of the XML. It seems that the problem exists in the code with regard to this part. Units for guide positions are not converted, and if I type 10mm,0mm for a guide position, not even the mm's are removed from the number. It would be convenient to be able to enter stuff in other units then px in this part of the XML.

I played a little with a drewn rectangle. Units get converted here. I drew a rectangle and changed the following attributes to 50mm: height, width, X, Y.
The Y coordinate seems to run from 0 on the top of the page to max at the bottom of the page (so entering Y: 50mm will end up 50mm + height of rectangle from the top of the page) in XML, while on the screen the Y=0 is on the bottom of the page, this was a little surprise for me. I see that this has to do with the way SVG coordinates are made up, but was a little surprise for me. Could maybe become an option for the gui settings to let it's Y axis run the other way around? (or for the XML editor to have Y coordinates converted to gui values?)

By the way, where the drawing objects apparently have an X and Y coordinate, the guides have an attribute position, this is probably still due to the old code base of sodipodi.

I hope this gives you some clues about what I ran/run into and must admit that my initial bug report was not very clear on the issue.