I'm used to a lathe where the cross-slide dial is calibrated in actual movement. Baffled the whatsits out of me the first time I used a machine calibrated in "diameter" instead - couldn't work out why I kept going through a measure/cut/measure/oh bugger cycle... Still, if it's anything like my mill with DRO, I can't remember when I actually read anything off a dial!
Is the lathe metric or imperial, and can you tell me how it manages screw-cutting of the opposite system - is there a 127T gear in there, or somesuch?