It would be very useful to have a tool to measure distances and areas and in which the user could specify a scale (i.e., unitless 1:100, or 1 inch(cm) = 20 feet(m), etc.). The discussion appears to have been started as a request in KDE’s bug tracker linked below. Krita appears to have some limited measuring functionality already. Would that be a suitable starting point?
I envision the user starting by drawing a line, choosing additional points as necessary, displaying a distance along each segment as well as the entire line, then calculating an area if the geometry is closed and doesn’t overlap.
Additional info that might be useful from comment #3 in the above bug report, “PDF documents can have [measurement] data for the real-world scale transformation. Check section 12.9 of the PDF standard: https://opensource.adobe.com/dc-acrobat-sdk-docs/pdfstandards/PDF32000_2008.pdf”
hi, welcome
don’t know if this meets any of your needs but there is a package called kruler that lets you measure distances on the screen.
Unfortunately not. Kruler use case is different to the one proposed in the link.
For a bit of context, see the image below from a commercial software with the functionality proposed:
As you can see, the user can select the scale of the document (or calibrate the document for a custom scale) and then every time the user selects 2 point in the document the software returns the associated distance between the points. There is also the option to make polylines and poligones and extract more complex information like perimeters and areas.
I understand that this is a feature not suited for everyone (mostly professionals and/or engineering students) and therefore probably not a priority, but as far as I know it is something lacking in the open source/Linux side of things.
Sure, but you can use KRuler switched to Scale = percentage and just calibrate it over e.g. 10 meters and then get fractions… But this is just a workaround, I believe CAD programs are better suited for your case.
Partially it is true. Although CAD software has this functionality, having this feature available in Okular for PDFs would be great (personally I think it follows KDE’s “Simple by default, powerful when needed” slogan). As it was mentioned in the first comment, it is also part of the PDF standard… so is there any reason to not implement it?
Some well known software like (Adobe Acrobat, or Bluebeam) already include this functionality. Unfortunately none of these programs work on Linux, so people are stuck using Windows/Mac if they need to use something like that.
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Ah, so you require it in Okular for PDFs? That was not clear to me and makes more sense probably. Maybe wishlist it at bugs.kde.org.
Apologies if it wasn’t clear.
I think someone already did a while ago. It is in the first link that “attendee2531” posted at the beginning of this thread.
Hopefully that was the correct way of doing it and someone is able to pick it up and make it happen!
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Correct - I wanted to bring a little more attention to it. Okular is the best alternative to proprietary adobe and bluebeam products, but it lacks a robust measurement tool. That functionality is probably one of the few most widely-used features that Okular lacks compared to those products.
