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Columnar Text Selection With Preview in PDF
Lost Formatting With PDF In OS X
Another PDF/Preview tip
Do I qualify as a true PDF nerd?
Connecting Your iPod To A TV Set - Non-Apple AV Cables
More On Connecting Your iPod To A TV Set - Non-Apple AV Cables

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Columnar Text Selection With Preview in PDF

From MV

In Preview, to select a column of text, hold the alt key, then click and drag. Go crazy and select a colum of letters! That's why I still don't use Acrobat.

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Hi MV;

Cool! It works!. You learn something new every day on the Internet. :-b

Incidentally, I checked and this also works in Skim too.

Thanks for the tip.

I have updated the article.

Charles






Lost Formatting With PDF In OS X

From loosecanon

One important issue is not addressed here, and I would value some pointers. I find that only basic data survive in PDF's generated from OSX's print dialogue. I.e., if I use drop shadow on text or objects in a Pages doc, for instance, it is lost when the document is exported or saved as PDF and viewed in anything but Preview. Only plain text and naked objects. They are still present if I use Preview, but all is lost when I need something printed on another person's computer/platform, even Mac, if an app other than Preview is used. I currently work on 10.3.9, and have not had a chance to see if this issue remains in 10.4.x.

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Hi Loosecanon;

Actually I did address this issue indirectly in the section about editing PDF documents in Papyrus 12:

<BLOCKQUOTE>"The document type PAP/PDF (optionally using the extension *.PAP.PDF, or simply *.PDF, as you choose) can be opened and read with any version of Acrobat Reader, but because of the "hidden" text data in Papyrus format, it remains freely editable when opened in Papyrus 12 - Papyrus handles PAP/PDF files as normal Papyrus documents."</BLOCKQUOTE>

And also in the section about annotating PDFs in Skim:

<BLOCKQUOTE>"Skim also lets you add lines to a PDF document, to highlight relations between sections. These lines are saved with the document, and will appear when viewed by other Skim users, but the lines are not saved in the PDF data itself, so other PDF viewer applications will probably not be able to display them. You can also use Skim to give presentations of a PDF document."</BLOCKQUOTE>

Editing and formatting in these applications apparently embeds the edit data in a non PDF native format that is only readable by the creator application or apps. that are fully file format compatible with the creator app.

Charles

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RE: Lost Formatting With PDF In OS X

From Vaughn Cordero

loosecanon: seems like Pages and Preview use some Quartz routines that faze apps that use non-Quartz engines to display the PDF, e.g. Adobe's Reader.

As a workaround (since I dont have a sample PDF of yours to test) I would venture that if you can print these drop shadows on a postscript printer, a viable method of forcing a compatible PDF would be to use the 'Save PDF as Postscript..' option and then opening the .ps file in Preview and saving out as PDF again.

This should force all the drawing to use the lowest-common denominator PDF drawing routines.

Charles:

Must be late where you are <img src="http://www.applelinks.com/images/smileys/smile.gif" width="19" height="19" alt="smile" style="border:0;" /> loosecannon is talking about some drop-shadows he applied in Pages.app that dont display correctly anywhere other than Preview.app (meaning he cannot see/print them correctly on other platforms/PDF viewers). Nothing related to the app-specific data some apps store in the PDF as I doubt the Print dialog in OSX would output anything other than the display portion of the PDF.

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Hi Vaughn;

Late indeed.

I agree with your analysis of loosecannon's issue.

Thanks.

Charles

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RE: Lost Formatting With PDF In OS X

From loosecanon

Charles and Vaughn,

Thanks for your responses. I think Vaughn has picked up on what I'm trying to convey. Vaughn, I'm too limited in skills to grasp your explanation re postscript details, but if you have someplace that I can send a sample file [i.e., a PDF I've created of something in a different app for viewing in something besides Preview, altho as a test you probably would also want to look at it in Preview]. You can contact me thru our website at christchurchgp.org???/spir?ituality.htm8l - of course, you'll want to delete the question marks and the numeral 8 in the URL!







Another PDF/Preview tip

From Dave Hanks

My favorite use for Preview is to generate "jpg" images of MS Word, Excel or other documents. These are easily to post to the web. Since a pdf wants to be "rendered and viewed" or "downloaded" to your disk, their handling will vary depending upon which browser and what plugins you are running.

However, jpg images are photos. You post them and they are always visible to users of your site. Try this yourself:

1. Open a "document"

2. print it as a pdf (I add "PDF" at the end of the document name-which really helps when suffixes are turned off!)

3. Open the pdf in Preview

4. Replace "PDF" with JPG so it is a distinct name

5. Select JPEG as the Format type 6. select SAVE

Bingo you just converted a text document into a photo!

Sorry, I did not want to "join" your site to leave a comment.

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Hi Dave;

Thanks for the tip. Works great.

Incidentally, another program that slickly converts PDF's to jpegs and vice versa (plus many other formats) is ToyViewer, which is one of my favorite freeware applications:
http://www7a.biglobe.ne.jp/~ogihara/software/OSX/toyv-eng.html

No problem about not joining. We would like to open comments to non-members, but whenever we try it, spammers spoil the party.

Charles






Do I qualify as a true PDF nerd?

From Les

Enjoyed the article but now realise that I still have PDFLab, PDFCompress and Combine PDF's (in addition to some of the above named) in my toolbox.

Do I qualify as a true PDF nerd, or does that just indicate that I'm just too lazy to purge old tools?

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Hi Les;

Hey, if they work for you, keep 'em around - old or otherwise. As I said in the article, the PDF tools profiled are ones that I use, but it wasn't intended to be an exhaustive roundup of all available PDF applications.

Charles

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Re: Do I qualify as a true PDF nerd?

From Vaughn Cordero

Charles: No problem.

Cannon: I sent you an email so you know where to to send the sample.

Les: Thats nerdy, but try perusing the 600-or-so pages of the PDF spec and writing PDFs from scratch.

Vaughn






Connecting Your iPod To A TV Set - Non-Apple AV Cables

From ender

You can accomplish the same task using a standard mini-jack to three-plug RCA cable. These cables can be purchased for less than ten bucks, it makes for a slightly cheaper way watch your iPod videos on your TV set. Set your iPod to output to TV, plug in the cable via the minijack, and you?re nearly there. The final step is to simply plug the RCA connections into your TV using a non-standard setup. Apple outputs the iPod's video to the red cable, rather than the traditional yellow. So you'll want to plug the red cable into the video (yellow) plug on your TV, the yellow cable into the white plug, and the white cable into the red plug. This is an easy hack that anyone with an iPod video can try.

Best regards,

ender

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Hi ender;

Thanks. I was aware that other cables will work, but anyone with the modest hacking skills to mix and match the color coding in order to use the less expensive generic cables probably already knows it can be done.

As Apple puts it regarding their own AV cable: "This cable is made specifically for iPod with color display (other AV cables are not compatible with iPod with color display)." The only incompatibility would be, as you note the color coding,

For users with limited technical savvy, it's easier and less confusing to just go with the more expensive Apple cable.

Thanks for the mini-tutorial for the more adventurous.

Charles






More On Connecting Your iPod To A TV Set - Non-Apple AV Cables

From fastcatmac

Proprietary work around

In order to make your TV play back the iPod signal, you've got to redirect the outputs. You can't just plug the yellow RCA plug into the yellow RCA jack and the red into the red or the white into the white

Plug the RED RCA plug into your TV's yellow RCA jack.
Plug the YELLOW RCA plug into your TV's white RCA jack.
Plug the WHITE RCA plug into your TV's red RCA jack.

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Hi FCM;

The formula you describe will be necessary when using generic standard AV cables, which is why Apple doesn't recommend them.

When using Apple's iPod AV Cable, the RCA plugs are coded to correspond with the RCA jacks on the TV.

Charles


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Charles W. Moore


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