Measuring Tools
From Scribus Documentation Project
Measurements
The button Measurements in the toolbar is a toggle button. If it's activated, a new window “Distances” appears. If you now click somewhere in your document and drag the mouse, the mouse pointer changes to a small cross, and a dotted line is drawn from your starting point to the current position of the mouse cursor, as long as you hold down the left mouse button:
The unit for all values in the distances window is the standard unit of the document (in our example: mm). From top to bottom, it shows the following values:
- X1, Y1 and X2, Y2: These are the coordinates for the starting point (X1, Y1) and the end point (X2, Y2) of the line. As always in the Scribus coordinate system, the upper left corner of the document is the origin (0,0).
- DX and DY: The length of the drawn line in the X- and Y-direction.
- Angle: The angle of the line. A straight line from left to right with no shift on the Y axis is used as the starting point. Such a line has an angle of 0 degrees (as shown in the screenshot).
- Length: The absolute length of the line.
The image below demonstrates the use of these values: DX and length are the same, because there is no shift on the Y axis:
Rulers
There are some viewing options for the rulers on the left and the top of the canvas. By checking/unchecking View > Show Rulers or with Ctrl+Shift+R you can show or hide the rulers.
If you choose View > Rulers Relative to Page, the left upper edge of each page becomes the origin of the rulers (“0”):
You can also set a free point of origin by using the drag ruler. This means you drag your mouse pointer from the upper left corner to the new zero-point. To help you find the new point precisely, cross-hair lines indicate the position of the point in the rulers as long as you keep the left mouse button pressed.
In the status bar you can change the measuring unit of the rulers:
The Status Bar
At the bottom of the Scribus window, you can see the status bar. Here, the actual position of the mouse is always shown in the fields “X-Pos” and “Y-Pos”:





