units for calibrate tape

[Philip Balister]

We read feet in decimal feet.

The scary thing is some tapes, particularly the longer ones bought and
the home mega mart type stores have inches on one side and decimal on
the other. Then you are never quite sure what you are reading :)

Thanks,

Philip


On Tue, 2004-08-31 at 05:49, Olly Betts wrote:
> On Mon, Aug 30, 2004 at 11:08:04AM -0400, Philip Balister wrote:
> > Last weekend I used a tape that was missing the first foot. I am trying
> > to use the calibrate command to fix this. Do the units of calibrate
> > follow the tape units (in my case feet) or are they always meters?
> 
> They're the tape units (i.e. the current setting of "*units tape" when the
> *calibrate command is processed).  Looking at the manual, that's not
> clear.  I'll fix that - thanks for pointing it out.
> 
> A good way to remember how *calibrate works (especially for getting the sign
> correct) is to remember you specify the "zero error" - i.e. the reading the
> instrument gives when it should read zero.  So if a tape is read in feet
> and is a foot too short, then when the tape should read zero it actually
> reads "1".
> 
> Incidentally, do you read in feet with a decimal fraction?  Or are you
> reading feet + inches and converting externally?  It would be easy
> enough to add support for feet + inches if it would be useful.
> 
> Cheers,
>     Olly