I couldn't disagree with the accepted answer more. You have a lot of authority, telling the entire world of designers what's "Inappropriate" for a user who simply want to be able to see a ruler in the emulated DPI of their own intended context. You suddenly know the use case of every designer in the world enough to just tell people what is or isn't possible or appropriate? That's ridiculous, this use case is common sense and has been needed for YEARS, and I only know this because this issue is now is causing one of my client's quite a lot of trouble trying to simply open an SVG that has a pixel size intended for 600dpi and seeing nothing even close to the mm size in Illustrator. And yet, our own home grown software does this JUST FINE.
Think about this: Photoshop has the feature to set the DPI, change the rulers automatically, and it's incredibly useful to the professionals who use it. Ilustrator is like the sister of Photoshop, very similar, made by the same company, has a painfully similar UI structure without actually feature matching, and thus people's expectations are already set by this. So, this shouldn't be a surprise request, since the common use case on the PS side was created by the same company, it's natural to expect consistent features or usability in the sister software, even if one is vector, and one is raster.
User Feedback is Clear
So, seeing that users have expressed CLEARLY that they simply want a useful feature that shows a ruler and the artboard size in a way they can control for their own reference, let's also point out that it can be entirely unobtrusive - that is, it doesn't have to be the default, it doesn't have to be enabled out of the box, everything can remain the same in Illustrator if you don't use the added feature. But, for those of use who LEGITIMATELY NEED THIS, if it was there, it would be helpful to professionals who rely on the software for similar features. There's nothing "inappropriate" about that. The most inappropriate thing in this forum thread is anyone saying to someone else that "YOU DON'T NEED THAT" when you don't know what they need, because you're not them, and they actually have an honest, legitimate use case that resonates with thousands of other power users.
Nobody Cares About How Well You Understand the Definition of Vector, and Adobe Has Already Exceeded It
Now, as you get tripped up entirely on some evangelical explanation of vector, just stop. That's not the point, we all get it, idealistically forcing vector down people's throats is what the norm is Today. The thing is, for professionals relying on the software, that sucks. Thus, nobody cares about the norm, nobody needs 5 explanations of the same runaround, of what true vector is or isn't, because good innovation is what they expect from Adobe when it's simple forms like this. Not lessons on being a tight ass for semantics.
Illustrator is vector? Great. Let's make it more than that with simple helpful features like they ALREADY have done! That's not inappropriate, that's good product development and finishing what they've started.
Adobe Already Converts to Units of Measure with 72DPI Even Though All Monitors Do Not Have This Resolution!
As a software developer, and graphic designer, and developer of graphic design apps, it's clear to see Adobe has ALREADY implemented a conversion of vector to DPI by offering an ArtBoard size and a Ruler that has real world units of measure in the first place, so that "arbitrary" conversion has already been hard coded to what only fits the primary use case. Believe it or not, there is more than one valid use case for the definitive vector editing software of the world, and that's not anyone's right to decide for everyone else, because it's about needs and innovation of the future as we create it, not old standards that you're stuck on.
Trying to point out that "VECTOR HAS NO UNIT", that pixels are color codes, that units of measures are simply ratio conversions, blah blah is just ignorant because this exact concept is already there in AI and PS, just not in AI in any way that's as versatile and it doesn't actually update to match the monitor, so it's not even doing real screen size units. So, almost nothing people are pointing out about "how it should be" is even valid, because it should at LEAST be accurate to the monitor, if that's why "72ppi" was hard coded one fateful day in the early 2000s or late 90s or whenever this was decided by one release to be the end all be all of ruler units and artboard size labels.
72dpi should not be hard-coded for everyone when that's not accurate on every screen, since screens come in all types of resolutions now, including 72, 96, 100, and higher with Retina and other 2x and 3x resolution displays, etc. This feature was only valid when all screens had the same resolution, so an update here is already necessary.
SIMPLE FEATURE REQUEST TO COPY PHOTOSHOP WOULD SOLVE EVERYTHING
So, I humbly request that everyone get off their high horse, and accept a simple but highly useful feature request that helps people bridge the gap between Vector and real world units of measure, with two parts:
1) Artboard properties > size area option to change DPI / emulated resolution from default 72 to variable within some practical range (1 - 1000?). A button to pop up a editing dialogue for this value complete with resample checkbox (like photoshop)
2) Ruler changes scale to match artboard resolution
Ex: see Photoshop, where you've set people's expectations for this functionality already.
If you absolutely hate it, just make a setting in preferences that turns it on and otherwise hide it entirely like it is today. A preference like " Show DPI Settings yes[ ] no " is all it would need to be, to toggle #1, and you can have a little warning there that links users to this forum to learn all about the nuances of vector, for those who care.
Byproduct of this is basically a bug fix for the rulers since users can then set the artboard / document resolution to match their monitors if they have high-def monitors, as anyone with a modern mac or HD monitor has now, to fix the currently broken rulers for those users.
Seems not just valid and incredibly appropriate, but also pretty overdue to me.
1 Correct answer
27
Replies
AdChoices