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Thumbnailling PDFs
Posted: 13 Nov 2006 12:41
by lukescammell
Has anyone had any success in thumbnailing PDFs using XY? If they have please let me know how you did it as it'd be somewhat useful to me.
Thanks
Re: Thumbnailling PDFs
Posted: 13 Nov 2006 18:26
by jacky
lukescammell wrote:Has anyone had any success in thumbnailing PDFs using XY? If they have please let me know how you did it as it'd be somewhat useful to me.
Don't think it can be done, since XY doesn't do thumbs of PDF files, only preview them through IE....
Posted: 13 Nov 2006 18:33
by surrender
I was trying to view pdf with irfanview because it has ghostscript plugin. but it doesnt work for me. can any of you view pdf in image viewer?? I guess if you can make your imageviewer to see pdf you might see thumbnails in XY too. or??
Posted: 13 Nov 2006 19:12
by jacky
surrender wrote:I was trying to view pdf with irfanview because it has ghostscript plugin. but it doesnt work for me. can any of you view pdf in image viewer?? I guess if you can make your imageviewer to see pdf you might see thumbnails in XY too. or??
Nope don't think that'll change anything, thumbnails in XY are made by XY itself, not any external app (just like previewing pictures, for that matter)
Posted: 13 Nov 2006 22:46
by surrender
Oh i see. I was trying to apply codec analogy here. I actually preview pdfs in infopanel, thats ideal for me.
Posted: 14 Nov 2006 10:29
by lukescammell
Hmm, bugger...
The only app I've used so far that previews PDF is Adobe's Bridge which is part of their Creative Suite (not cheap). Of course, the actual file management features of Bridge suck, so I'm kind caught between a rock and a hard place. On the one hand I can manage the files very well with XY, but can't see them (thumbnails), and on the other I can see them very well in Bridge but actually doing anything with them is like pulling teeth.
Meh, I even recall saying in another thread a few weeks back that I didn't think XY should support RAW thumbnailing... guess I disagree with myself now
Posted: 14 Nov 2006 12:12
by admin
A thumbnail is (usually) very small. PDF thumbnails won't show you much, or?
Posted: 14 Nov 2006 13:04
by lukescammell
They would for me
I have several magazine covers and adverts that I can tell at a glance (even a small thumbnail) but take a lot longer to find in "text list mode" even with all the great visual filters and colours that XY has.
Besides, you can set the size of the thumbnails in XY all the way up to 320×320 pixels
Posted: 14 Nov 2006 17:16
by jacky
Just a FYI, I'm sure you know this already but
here's an article about using "thumbs extractor" for shell objects in VB.
In Windows 2000 and above, the system by default will provide thumbnail viewers for pictures (BMP, GIF, JPEG, PNG), video files (AVI, MPG etc), Office documents (DOC, PPT, XLS, WMF), Web pages (HTML, MHT) and e-mail messages (EML). Note that Office documents can be previewed only if they've been saved with an embedded preview picture - you need to check the box in the Properties dialog to enable this.
However, other thumbnail extractors can be freely added to the system (sample coming soon) so you might have the ability to preview other files. Whilst its probably possible to check whether there is a extractor for a particular file type by looking in the registry, its easier just to try and create a thumbnail for the file - you'll get an error if its not possible.
It should get previews of a bunch of files, just like Explorer does, including PDF I guess if you've had an app that added this to your system. Dunno if Acrobat Reader does that or not...
I tried it quickly, I couldn't get previews for PDF (but i only use Foxit so makes sense), DOC (but that might just be because I don't use thumbs in my DOCs) or even HTML (note sure why, but Explorer can't either so I may have disabled that somewhere
)... Only worked for JPG/AVI for me, so kinda useless, but just in case.....
Posted: 14 Nov 2006 17:45
by admin
jacky wrote:Just a FYI, I'm sure you know this already but
here's an article about using "thumbs extractor" for shell objects in VB.
Interesting! Did not know this. I tried the sample EXE that can be downloaded there but failed to extract a single thumbnail from any of the many different files I tried, although some of them (PDFs)
did show thumbnails in Explorer. Hmm, looks like that thumbs extractor does not work...
Posted: 14 Nov 2006 18:17
by jacky
admin wrote:I tried the sample EXE that can be downloaded there but failed to extract a single thumbnail from any of the many different files I tried, although some of them (PDFs)
did show thumbnails in Explorer. Hmm, looks like that thumbs extractor does not work...
Well, just to be sure I saved a Word document with a preview picture, and both Explorer & that thumbs extractor did show it. So for me it works as much as Explorer...
Posted: 30 Jan 2007 09:48
by j_c_hallgren
FYI: Saw this note about PDF format specs being released today...not sure if this might be of some use in this wish...
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/pdf/pdf_reference.html
http://www.desktoplinux.com/news/NS2782821882.html
Second link is story about it...
Posted: 23 Aug 2007 16:24
by lukescammell
I discovered something today that makes XY look pretty bad...
WE 1 - XY 0
WE 2 - XY 0
This is Vista WE. I don't know if this is any help, but text searches are fone in PDFs using something called
the Adobe IPFilter.
Posted: 23 Aug 2007 16:55
by serendipity
+2 for this feature.
Posted: 23 Aug 2007 18:58
by admin
lukescammell wrote:I discovered something today that makes XY look pretty bad...
Let me guess: you saw the game last night?
PDF thumbs are easier wished than done. I have no problem to not support PDF thumbs at the moment. Far greater things are in my mind...
