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Preview, the Mac app people forget about

fourth-wall.co.uk

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Re: Preview, the Mac app people forget about

#51

Post by [deleted] »

pimlottc wrote: post #10
jitl wrote: post #7

Preview is one of those essential things that sets macOS apart from the other operating systems, and contributes to that “Mac has good UX” vibe. Last time I opened the Windows equivalent, it tried to sell me on Microsoft’s PDF-alike format… and asked me to connect Office365. Another tiny macOS feature I love is that you can drop a file icon on any Open or Save dialog to select the file in the dialog. On other OSs, th…

Another great related feature is how easy it is to “print” to Preview and save as PDF. It makes it very easy to save copies of confirmations, payment receipts, etc when sites don’t provide a PDF link. If you haven't tried it, make sure you are printing using the system dialog, and select "Open in Preview" in the drop-down list in the lower-left corner.

[deleted]

Re: Preview, the Mac app people forget about

#52

Post by jitl »

MawKKe wrote: post #43
josephg wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want to scan a document and have an iphone handy, you can also right click in Finder and "Scan document... from iPhone". It opens a UI on your phone that I've never seen before, and "scans" (photographs) pages of a document. When you're done the results end up in a new PDF wherever you clicked.

That iOS scan feature is "hidden" in the Files app. Open it on your phone and press the three dots in the top right corner and it should have "scan documents" option. You can also select "black & white" mode for text documents which saves a ton of space

Notes.app also exposes scanning… but often I want to scan to camera roll. They should add a button in Camera.

Re: Preview, the Mac app people forget about

#53

Post by herodotus »

I really enjoyed working with the Preview team before I retired from Apple. My small group created a private framework that added "document reconstruction" to PDF documents: basically an inferred DOM based on whatever information (mainly geometric) we could use in the PDF document.

Our moment of fame game at WWDC 2009, when Bertrand Serlet talked about Snow Leopard during the Keynote. At around the 5:10 mark he talks about performance improvements to Preview. He then goes on to say "There are also lots of little touches. The one I like is about text selection in PDF files. .... In Snow Leopard, we have used a little bit of AI to infer the structure of the document...." (He then demonstrates intelligent selection across columns) [Applause from the audience]. (https://youtu.be/FTfChHwGFf0?t=306)

My colleague and I presented the proposal to add this "little bit of AI" to a small group from the Graphics and Imaging department. Bertrand was in attendance, and it was thanks to him that we joined G&I. They were a fantastic team to work with!

Re: Preview, the Mac app people forget about

#54

Post by lotsofpulp »

pimlottc wrote: post #10
jitl wrote: post #7

Preview is one of those essential things that sets macOS apart from the other operating systems, and contributes to that “Mac has good UX” vibe. Last time I opened the Windows equivalent, it tried to sell me on Microsoft’s PDF-alike format… and asked me to connect Office365. Another tiny macOS feature I love is that you can drop a file icon on any Open or Save dialog to select the file in the dialog. On other OSs, th…

Another great related feature is how easy it is to “print” to Preview and save as PDF. It makes it very easy to save copies of confirmations, payment receipts, etc when sites don’t provide a PDF link. If you haven't tried it, make sure you are printing using the system dialog, and select "Open in Preview" in the drop-down list in the lower-left corner.

Is there any reason it took so long for Microsoft to include print to PDF in Windows other than bad management?

Re: Preview, the Mac app people forget about

#55

Post by ollien »

jeffbee wrote: post #37
ollien wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This feature is one of the few things I miss dearly since moving to Linux as my daily-driver OS. There are command-line tools but nothing compares to Preview from what I've found.

https://github.com/pdfarranger/pdfarranger

Wow, this looks great! I'll have to give this a try later tonight.

Re: Preview, the Mac app people forget about

#57

Post by Kon-Peki »

haroldp wrote: post #23
atonse wrote: post #14

I've used preview to sign hundreds of PDFs and love showing people that little feature that is invaluable.

I recently discovered that the signing feature can use an associated iPhone or iPad (with stylus!) as the signing device where you write your signature.

You can also sign a piece of paper and hold it up to the camera to create the signature it uses.

Re: Preview, the Mac app people forget about

#58

Post by em-bee »

every time i open a document with preview, it insists on opening all the documents i had open before. i must be doing something wrong, and find a different workflow, maybe instead of closing the app, i need to manually close each document that i don't need anymore.

i guess it's not an issue if you use preview often and keep it running all the time, but i rarely need it since most of what i do is either terminal or browser based or uses a dedicated application.

but when i open a document i expect that document to be opened, and nothing else.

this would work a lot better if preview would put all documents in tabs so that only the document i asked for is visible while the rest are hidden in the other tabs.

Re: Preview, the Mac app people forget about

#59

Post by maxwelldone »

jitl wrote: post #7

Preview is one of those essential things that sets macOS apart from the other operating systems, and contributes to that “Mac has good UX” vibe. Last time I opened the Windows equivalent, it tried to sell me on Microsoft’s PDF-alike format… and asked me to connect Office365. Another tiny macOS feature I love is that you can drop a file icon on any Open or Save dialog to select the file in the dialog. On other OSs, th…

This is my wish list for preview:

1. Support for h265 video previews (not sure about technical or any other licensing hurdles)

2. Basic playback controls (via keyboard) when viewing video previews - just play, pause, skip would do. I review a ton of videos and I'd often like to pause to take a screenshot or skip to quickly see what's happening in the video.

3. Option to zoom on text files like json, csv etc. Not a big deal but would be a great addition especially on hi-res external displays.

Edit: Looks like I mixed quicklook with preview. My bad.

Re: Preview, the Mac app people forget about

#60

Post by dchest »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #54
pimlottc wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another great related feature is how easy it is to “print” to Preview and save as PDF. It makes it very easy to save copies of confirmations, payment receipts, etc when sites don’t provide a PDF link. If you haven't tried it, make sure you are printing using the system dialog, and select "Open in Preview" in the drop-down list in the lower-left corner.

Is there any reason it took so long for Microsoft to include print to PDF in Windows other than bad management?

I believe this was due to Adobe threatening them with a lawsuit https://betanews.com/2006/06/02/adobe-to-sue-microsoft-for-p...
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