locale and OpenOffice

[John D Lamb]

On Sun, 2008-08-31 at 13:21 +0200, verwertungsprozess wrote:

> Could anyone give me a hint how to force OpenOffice to use the metric
> system for measurements?

Tools > Options > OpenOffice.org Writer > General

There is an option that allows you to choose millimetres, centimetres,
inches, picas or points. IIIRC you have to set this separately for
Writer and Calc.

I suppose the justification for this is that although we Europeans use
the metric system for most things, 1 point = 1/72 inch = 1/12 pica. So
it’s often easier to specify 12 point text with 14.1 point leading in 28
pica lines.

Writer accepts any measurement uint in its dialogues and converts it to
the set measurement unit. So you can specify, for example a paragraph
indent of 1pi and it will convert to 0.42 cm. This is especially useful
for leading (linespacing) ans spacing between paragraphs. Usually it is
easier to specify these in points even if you use centimetres as set
measurment unit. Use pt for points, pi for picas, " for inches, cm for
centimetres and mm for millimetres.

-- 
JDL