PDF previews

Post by **nikos** » 2008 Apr 14, 14:48

email to n.bozinis@ic.ac.uk should do the trick

Post by **nikos** » 2008 Apr 14, 17:48

thanks for sending me the sample PDFs. Some PDFs like those you sent me do not contain any proper text but they are pictures of text. In that sense the best xplorer2 can do is show the picture and can't extract the test

now i've got 2 computers in front of me, one shows thumbnails as expected, the other doesn't. I'll google a bit to see if other people have this problem and if there's a fix

DundoreZ · Post by **DundoreZ** » 2008 Apr 14, 17:52

Awesome, keep me in the loop.

Post by **nikos** » 2008 Apr 15, 08:20

i take it you can't see PDF thumbnails in windows explorer either, right?

DundoreZ · Post by **DundoreZ** » 2008 Apr 15, 13:00

Actually yes. In the thumbnail viewing mode in windows explorer i can see a preview of the pdf, it is very tiny but it's a preview. What i can't see is a preview of the pdf when i put the viewing mode into filmstrip mode.

Post by **nikos** » 2008 Apr 15, 16:23

so there's a specific PDF that shows as an image thumbnail in windows explorer and does not do so in xplorer2 thumbnail mode? Can you double check with a small file and test the same one in x2 and w/e? One catch is the byte size limit on thumbnails, so if the file is above 1MB or so then x2 won't extract thumbnails unless you increase the limit from Tools > Options > General

other than this size constraint, i would expect the same file to behave the same in xplorer2 and windows -- or let me know!

DundoreZ · Post by **DundoreZ** » 2008 Apr 16, 20:55

Thumbnails work in both windows explorer and xplorer2 lite. It's the prieview window that doesn't work.

I have already checked the file size limits in the options menu. Plus you have seen by the examples that i sent you that these pdfs are under 500KB, so they aren't very large.

Plus i can preview one of these pdfs in xplorer2 lite on my machine at my desk and it works just fine. When i try to preview it on the other machine that i need it to work on it shows me the garbled message i posted in one of my earlier posts.

Just so we are on the same page, the preview works if i keep the preview pane small enough. Once i make the preview pane larger, the pdf preview turns into the garbled message i referenced earlier.

fgagnon · Post by **fgagnon** » 2008 Apr 16, 23:28

DundoreZ wrote:...the preview works if i keep the preview pane small enough. Once i make the preview pane larger, the pdf preview turns into the garbled message i referenced earlier.

And that is what I corroborated: it is not that certain PDF's don't work at all; it is only that when the QV pane gets too wide the draft mode reverts to a text only preview (showing the headers & some subsequent code garble).

DundoreZ · Post by **DundoreZ** » 2008 Apr 17, 17:59

Yes, that is exactly the issue.

Post by **nikos** » 2008 Apr 18, 12:10

ok, reinstalled adobe reader and now my pdf thumbnails are back and i can see what you describe. I still don't know why it happens but working on it

btw the professional version has this "normal" tab in the previewer window where adobe itself loads and you can see pdf content regardless of the window size

Post by **nikos** » 2008 Apr 18, 13:54

here's the verdict: it looks like the adobe component that is responsible for thumbnails fails if the preview requested is above a certain size. Then xplorer2 asks for text preview (pro version only). Sometimes this isn't available either -- if the pdf is all a picture like i said above, so you either get the text content or the "binary" data.

sorry there's not much i can do about it! If you need really large pdf thumbnails i recommend using the normal preview tab available for the professional version

fgagnon · Post by **fgagnon** » 2008 Apr 18, 16:30

So, summarizing,
as nikos said: "If you need really large pdf thumbnails" use "the normal preview tab available for the professional version"
and, as mentioned earlier, and what I recommend when you want to really read the file:
Just click on the file and open it in the adobe reader.
After all, preview panes and thumbnails are neither intended for nor designed for seeing the details.