Forums | MacLife

Don't get me wrong. I love my C-Thru ruler model GA-96 (or rulerS, rather. I've got a bunch) but there is something that's been bothering me. My original GA-96 ruler from 1995ish was labeled "PICAS" and "Point scale" and was exactly that. The fact that my good ol' ruler measured in old school picas (1 inch = 6.0225 picas) while my computer measured in PostScript picas (1 inch = exactly 6 picas) never really bothered me. I mean who needs to be that exact anyway?

I'll tell you who: A RULER COMPANY needs to be that exact, that's who.

When I bought a couple dozen more of these rulers for my department I noticed that they changed the labels from "PICAS" and "Point Scale" to "Computer Picas Scale" and "Computer Points Scale." Excellent, I thought. Now I'll be spot on. But when I finally put one side by side with my old school ruler I found that they never actually changed the scale itself. What the smurf? You can't just slap a new label on a ruler and call it correct. That would be like making a metric ruler by slapping the word "Centimeters" on an inch ruler...not quite to the same degree, but when it comes to rulers, I'd say wrong is wrong.

OK, OK. So maybe it's nothing to get worked up over. The fact that the scale comes up about 4 points short over the length of the ruler isn't going to kill anybody. But what the hell?! I AM gonna get worked up over it. Why bother doing something AT ALL if you're not going to do it RIGHT, RIGHT!? They could have just left the smurfing Pica label on there nobody have ever cared or probably even noticed and it would still have been correct. Instead, there was some douchebag working at a ruler company that knew enough to know that there is a slight difference between a pica and a computer pica but instead of making a new ruler to measure the new units decided to just change the smurfing writing on the old units so they would LOOK up-to date but not actually BE up-to-date....gah! smurf you C-Thru ruler company! You'll know exactly how long a pica is when you've got 72 of em shoved up yerrrr...ohhhh nevermind.