Apache OpenOffice (AOO) Bugzilla – Issue 29918
Charts with prefix multipliers (kilo, mega, nano)
Last modified: 2013-09-25 20:41:25 UTC
If you read often some graphs, you know how annoying it is to read numbers like "914000000". Even "9.14E+8" is not comfortable for making impression of data if you are doing your daily engineering tasks rather than rocket science. But wait! "914M" looks much better! Many Europeans (like me) are rather used to prefix multipliers like "k" for "kilo~", "M" for "mega~". In informal documents you can see prefixes in unexpected context like currency. 1 M€ stands for 1,000,000 € indeed. Unix guys are familiar with "-h" option for "ls" or "df" commands. Electrical engineers are going insane when they have to read condenser capacities that are usually in pico~ to micro~ Farads. I believe that if there was some option to display values on charts with these prefixes as well (say Scale Property: checkbox "Use Prefix Multipliers"), it would be a definitive engineer's choice and huge advantage over competitors' charting tools. As an example of well-readable graph I am attaching a graph of an audio measurement made by a specialized software so you can see how easy it is to read the X scale. I am sure you guys are familiar with prefixes, but just in case... the URL points to some article on the topic :-)
Created attachment 15702 [details] a chart with prefix multipliers
kla->bh: I think its an good idea.
Reassigned to Ingrid.
This looks like a good idea, but details have still to be specified.
I would like to suggest a refinement to this idea. I would like this to be an option under "Format Cells" in the "Numbers" tab. I propose that an additional Category is required called something like "Engineering" which would mean that a number like 9.14E+8 was displayed as 914M in the cells of the spreadsheet. If these numbers were used to generate a graph then the same format could be used.
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