Rulers Compared

Software for the Macintosh Millennium . . .

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Comparing Rulers

Here at Trilithon Software we work to constantly improve and update products based upon comments and suggestions made by customers or potential customers. Trilithon Rulers has benefitted from a variety of suggestions, and we believe that Rulers is now more than competitive with other similar products. To illustrate this, we have compared Trilithon Rulers with four other products of similar nature. The four products are described here with brief comments, and there is a feature by feature comparison table below.

Free Rulers is a Rulers product for Mac OS X that is written in RealBasic, as opposed to native Cocoa development tools. Free Rulers is reasonably full-featured.

Artis Rulers is a Rulers product for Mac OS X.

Screen Rulers is a Rulers product for Windows (runs on PCs), and for Mac OS Classic (not Mac OS X). It is included here because it is a good product, so if you are sentenced to working on PCs and need a screen rulers, this is the one to buy.

Aqua Rulers is a Rulers product for Mac OS X. It has a variety of interesting features, including fixed Edge Rulers, moveable Drag Rulers, and an optional full-screen cross hair tracker.


FEATURE	TRILITHON	FREE	ARTIS	SCREEN	AQUA
FEATURE	RULERS	RULERS	RULERS	RULERS	RULERS

Independent Horizontal/Vertical Rulers	YES	YES	YES	YES¹	NO²
First and Fourth Quadrant	BOTH	FOURTH	NO³	FOURTH	FOURTH
Background Colour Choices	YES	——	YES	——	——
Metal Background	YES	——	——	——	——
Selectable Cross Hair Sizes	YES	——	——	——	——⁴
Cross Hair Colour Choices	YES	——	——	——	——
Moveable via Mouse	YES	YES	YES	YES	YES⁵
Moveable via Arrow Keys	YES	YES	YES	YES	——
Independently Re-Sizeable	YES	YES	YES	YES	YES⁶
Lock Together	YES	YES	YES	——	YES⁷
Opacity Control	YES	——	YES	——	YES⁸
Zero Point at Zero, Middle, End	YES	——	——	——	——
Shift to Edges of Screen	YES	——	——	YES/NO⁹	——
Independent Scale Factors for Each Ruler	YES	——	——	——	——
Automatic Resolution Determination	YES	——	——	——	——
Cross Hair Cursor Outside Rulers	YES	YES	——	——	——¹⁰
Interactive Position Display	YES	YES	YES	YES	YES
Set Ruler Origins to Mouse Location	YES	YES	——	——	——
Independent Units for Each Ruler	YES	YES	——	YES	——
Inch Sixteenth Units	YES	YES	——	YES	YES
Inch Tenth Units	YES	——	YES	——	YES
Pixel Units	YES	YES	YES	YES	YES
Pica Units	YES	YES	——	YES	YES
Centimetre Units	YES	YES	YES	YES	YES
Millimetre Units	YES	——	——	——	YES
Percentage of Length Units	YES	——	——	YES	——
Copy Mouse Location to Clipboard	YES	YES	——	——	——
Tick Marks Flipable to Either Edge	YES	——	——	——	——
Rulers Respond to First Click or Drag	YES	——	YES	YES	YES
Always On Top	YES	——	YES	OPT	YES
Tracks Mouse When Not Active	YES	YES	YES	YES	YES
Remember Settings	YES	YES	——	YES	YES
Show Centre Mark	——¹¹	——	——	YES	——

1	Start Multiple Copies
2	Main Rulers Fixed to Edges of Screen; Drag Rulers Always Locked
3	Only Horizontal Ruler
4	Full Screen Cross Hairs
5	Drag Ruler Only
6	Drag Ruler Only
7	Permanently Locked
8	Drag Ruler Only
9	Only to Left or Top Edge
10	Only Full Screen
11	Ruler Origin can be set to Centre, achieving the same effect