Zoom Comparisons

Scribus Zoom

To the left are the basic zoom items, the spinbox and the buttons, located near the lower left corner of the window. The spinbox changes by 1% (absolute) as default Holding Ctrl or Alt causes each change to be 10% (absolute) Holding Shift: 0.1% (absolute) Holding Ctrl+Alt: 100% (absolute) - button reduces zoom by 50% (relative to current) 1 button brings zoom to 100% + button increases zoom by 100% (relative to current) Range of zoom: 10% to 3200% What "100%" represents is of course flexible, modified in Preferences > Display

Right-clicking on the spinbox brings up this dialog to the left, and the only pertinent items are Step up and Step down, which merely behave like clicking the arrows of the spinbox.

OpenOffice Zoom

Here it's a bit more complicated, with the zoom items in the lower right corner of the window.

	Here is the slider, where you can click-drag or simply click some position along the slider for the zoom to jump to. Clicking the - and + buttons changes by 5% (absolute). It's also worth noting that spinning the mouse wheel with the cursor over the slider has no effect. Range of zoom: 20% to 600% Notice that the value is not in a spinbox, so in other words, you cannot enter a value from the keyboard.
	If you right-click the number (%), you get this dialog, with some sensible choices.
		If you double-left-click the number (%), this large dialog pops up with some additional choices. It's not clear to me what this additional dialog really adds.

Inkscape Zoom

Here we see a nice juxtaposition of the X and Y of the mouse cursor position, with the Z of the zoom, in the lower right corner of the window.

So this small Z spinbox is all we're talking about – very compact, but maybe too compact, since in the upper ranges, there isn't enough room for all the digits. What's interesting is the behavior of the spinbox as it steps up and down: each jump is (about) 7% relative to the current value. For example, each jump at this 35% setting is 2-3% absolute at 100% zoom, the jump is 7% at 200% zoom, the jump is 14% This actually brings a rather pleasing efficiency to the change you see onscreen. You can, of course, use the keyboard to manually enter a zoom value. I should add that holding down keys (Ctrl, etc) makes no difference. Range of zoom: 1.0% to 25600% (is this really necessary?)

Right-clicking on the spinbox brings up this dialog with some useful choices, most of which are self-explanatory. Drawing zooms to include all the objects on the page at the largest size possible. Selection zooms to include only the selected object or objects at the largest size possible, and centers them.

Comments

<gregp> I think the Inkscape method has a lot going for it. I do like the slider in OpenOffice, though I realize the range of possible zoom in Scribus (and worse in Inkscape) may make a slider impractical, unless it has some logarithmic behavior.